Sunday, June 2, 2013

June 2, 2013. BRAN: Kimball to Chappell, 67 miles

This day started quite early--up at 5, breakfast, hauled our gear down to the high school and we were on the road at 6:37. Some people left as early as 5!  BRAN is a very well supported ride--there are rest stops every 10 miles or so, and roving SAGs as well. Highway 30 runs right alongside a set of very busy railroad tracks. At one point I called out "train back" when I realized the lights behind me were not on the road...

One of the rest stops was handled by "Sunbonnet" who is very sensitive to the sun. Here we are next to her clever covered wagon styled food cart.


I stopped to take a photo when I saw the ruins of what looked like an old Pony Express station just east of Potter.

Bingo! About 10 miles later I came upon a historical marker stating that this is indeed the old Pony Express route.

It was 39 degrees this morning, so I put on socks... That's rare for me this time of year. At one of the rest stops we met Janelle from Minnesota. Her feet were numb with cold and she had on bike shoes and socks! Here are our feet, and then Dianne, me, and Janelle.



At 10 AM I found myself in Sidney, where most restaurants and stores were closed. I found Grandma Jo's open and had a wonderful piece of chocolate meringue pie and a cup of coffee. There were quite a few bikers there.


It was very windy today. At yesterday's ride meeting they told us "you will have wind and it will not be at your back. Get used to it and get over it". He was so right. We are going east and the wind was from the east-northeast.

There were frequent trains on our route.  There was plenty to see besides trains and open fields, although there were a lot of those! We passed many horse and cattle ranches, and a section where there were hundreds of prairie dogs popping their little heads out of sandy mounds. Too far away to get a good photograph, they were fun to watch nonetheless.


I arrived at Chappell (pronounced chapel) a little after 1 PM. There was a contingent of residents to welcome us to their little town, and there are shuttle buses to take us anywhere we want to go. I found out the hardest thing about having a new tent is not putting it up, it's finding it on a football field full of hundreds of other tents!


It is so windy that I walked over to the bike fixer truck and bought a cable lock to tie my bike to the fence. These guys are out fixing bikes from 5 AM until who knows what time at night. As I mentioned earlier--this is a very well supported ride!

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