Sunday, July 11 - Day 28 - 60.5 Miles - 2026.9 Total Miles

It’s Kim again! Steve is still busy (at 8:30 p.m.) trying to figure out where we will be for the next few days so that I can secure lodging for those evenings. Why hasn’t this been done for a few hours now? Well….let me tell you about our day!
We woke up very early (6:00 a.m.) to beat the extreme afternoon heat. The plan was to bike to Chivington, and then backtrack to Eads, Colorado. Well, we are indeed in Eads, but we did NOT make it to Chivington. If there’s one thing I have learned on this trip, it is that everyday life and everyday problems still exist….even thousands of miles away from home!
Case in point…..let’s say that “hypothetically”, you could not find your wallet, with your cash (not much), your credit card, your debit card, your driver’s license, your insurance card, and your AAA card. More than likely, you would backtrack in your head through the previous days events, including what you wore during those activities, right?
Well…..now imagine doing that on vacation, when you have been through about 10 different towns, two hotels, a couple of gas stations, a campground, three groceries, an abandoned parking lot, and two different random points on a stretch of about 120 miles of road where bike tires have been changed. Yep! You guessed it…..Steve misplaced his wallet. He discovered this at a lunch stop today (about 12:30) in Eads when he went to buy himself some food at a gas station. All plans for the day were abandoned at that point, as we began an all out search through the van, the bags, and any other miscellaneous place we could imagine. We found nothing.
Plan B was then put into action. We found a hotel for the kids, Bobby, and Kyle, and after calling as many places as we could with the phone numbers we had in our possession, we left around 2:00 to backtrack today’s and yesterday’s footsteps. Let me tell you…..seeing nothing but fields for hundreds of miles at a time is difficult enough once, let alone two more times (back and forth)! Unfortunately, we did not find the aforementioned wallet. But, I did get some quality, uninterrupted conversation with my husband for four hours. That has not happened since this trip started. So, the proper holds, etc. have been put into place – which puts a real damper on the way we get money for right now! Luckily, Kyle’s mom and brother are leaving in the morning to meet us in Kansas Tuesday evening. They will be bringing us our emergency credit cards that we managed to get in their hands today! (Thanks for the legwork, Frank!)
So, not much more to report than that. The guys managed to bike 60.5 miles today. The kids and I leapfrogged them so that they had water (due to the extreme heat and lack of stores along the way). We saw wheat fields, tumbleweeds, and dust devils!
Oh….we did manage to have another “small world” encounter – this time with a man and wife riding a tandem bike from East to West. We crossed paths in a tiny town called Haswell. Steve yelled out to them that I had some water and snacks available if they needed it….and they took him up on it! Lo and behold, we find out that these people are from Lake Placid, New York (our most FAVORITE vacation spot ever….this summer will be the first one in about 6 years that we have not been up there!). When we told them about the fact that Steve and I have both completed the Ironman triathlon there, they exclaimed that their house is on the bike route of that race, and they sit out at the end of their lane and cheer each year for the competitors! We probably rode right past them! We exchanged numbers and addresses, and will most definitely be looking them up when we go that way next summer!
Okay, I had better go for now. All of the organizational details I take care of each day have yet to happen! Sometimes things go smoothly, sometimes they don’t! But…..it’s all good and we are VERY blessed to have these opportunities.