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Sunday, August 10, 2008, city park in Buhler, Kansas
It was nice sleeping again on a mattress. We slept in till about 8:30, then started getting ready for church. I hadn't ever attended a Lutheran service before and was pleasantly surprised. It had more rituals than I was used to, but more participation from the congregation too. Lots of scripture reading and scripted congregation responsive reading. Prayer time, children's time, communion, all more formal, but relaxed at the same time. And many friendly people there made us feel at home. Afterwards we went to the Cosmosphere attraction, a huge collection of space artifacts, the third largest in the world. All of us loved it. Then we went to the famous salt mine in Hutchinson. Later we went to the zoo. The kids loved it. We finally had to go because Kenneth Burgess, the fire chief, was expecting us around 3pm and it was almost 4:00. We finally got our bikes and headed for Buhler. Before we could leave the town, I needed directions, so I asked this nice couple in front of a building. They ended up feeding our whole family the desserts from their baby shower goodies. After about 5 miles, we met up with Allen Short, a local cyclist who helped me chart my Missouri route, away from the Ozarks and along the longest American bike trail -almost 300 miles long -- all the way to St. Louis. We also met Jim McIver, who was very helpful and told us where we could camp and contacted the local paper to run a story on us. He also clandestinely placed $20 in a map he gave us. Nice man. 20 miles.