Bicycling the Lewis & Clark Trail
Falls City, NE to Atchison, KS

Monday, August 30, 2004
Distance Cycled: 59 miles
Average Speed: 12.7 mph

We woke up and rode our bicycles about a mile to a restaurant which was located in a converted gas station. They make homemade cinnamon rolls so we had one for breakfast and took one along for a snack. Ken and Jan also took cinnamon rolls along for a snack. We headed out of town and began going up and down hills, a continuation of the end of our pervious day. After traveling about 13 miles our route became very flat because we were again traveling on the Missouri River flood plain. The road actually was along side the hills on the edge of the flood plain but at no time did it climb any of these hills. In White Cloud, KS we stopped for a break and ate some snacks including that cinnamon roll. This is the first time we have ever bicycled in Kansas.

I mentioned to Ken that I was still having trouble with the shifting on the bicycle and he asked just what it was doing. I told him that it was skipping a gear each time it went through the nine gears. Each time you were shifting up or down the gears, one time a single shift would jump the rear derailleur two gears. Ken and George both told me that the problem could be that I had changed the route of the cable. They had both experienced the same problem and all it took to fix it was to move the cable from one side of the bolt that fastens it to the rear derailleur to the other side of the bolt. I moved the cable and low and behold, the shifting problem suddenly disappeared. Well, I had to adjust the shifting a couple of more times but these adjustments were very minor.

We came to the town of Fanning, KS and our flat road disappeared. We spent the last 25 miles going up and down hills again. We stopped for lunch in Troy, which meant leaving the route and going up an extra hill to find the café. We arrived in Atchison and did not know which way to go but a kindly automobile driver told us which the right street was. We headed down this street and it continued to go up and down. Finally we turned toward downtown and after traveling several blocks thought that we were completely lost. Suddenly we saw the sign for the motel and just before we reached it, we saw the local visitor center. Jan was waving us to stop and so we did. We got all the information we could on the local restaurants and visitor points as well as maps for the rest of our journey. We also toured the attached museum, which covered the railroad, and Amelia Earhart, as she was born in Atchison.

We then climbed the hill to our motel. Does it sound like we are tired of hills? After showers etc. we walked down the hills to town and supper, for the first time in several states we had the choice of Spinach Lasagna. After supper half of us walked up to the Library so we could catch up on hearing from friends and family via email.