We Moved On Mile After Mile

Part II
Day 4
Emporia, KS to Florence, KS
44 miles

Rachel has been reading Sophronia's manuscript as we go along to see what they experienced through the places we are going. Here is an excerpt from when they traveled this section of our journey. 

"So on Monday, in spite of the sun, wind and dust, we moved on mile after mile." And then a few sentences later she wrote "The words were hardly out of her mouth when a blast of hot wind hit us so strongly, it almost blew us off our feet. Fearing the strong wind might turn over the wagons, Harry and Sid made right angle turns and stopped."

This could have been written by us. It was so strange to read her words and have experienced the same thing today with the wind. It was blowing out of the SW at 21+ miles an hour. It was very difficult to ride mile after mile into that strong of a wind. After 25 miles we decided to stop, go to our ending point and ride East with the wind at our back until we reached where we had been picked up. We really enjoyed those 19 miles!

One of the towns on our route today was Cottonwood Falls. My relatives stopped here for a week to "vacation" while on their journey. They fished for several days and then finished their vacation by giving an outdoor concert in town.

Courthouse in Cottonwood Falls, KS

We started out early today so that we could finish by lunch. It worked well and gave us time to check into the Historic Elgin Hotel B&B in Marion, KS.  I was able to wash our biking clothes and then we went out to explore the area because some of Clay's relatives came from around here.