Saturday April 17^th Derrick Inn Hotel, Ness City Kansas

16.00

A very quiet day, today. A bright sunny morning and little traffic. Corn and wheat fields that seem to go on forever. We did sixty-four miles on just two roads, twenty miles into a northern headwind , but the rest, heading west on Highway 96, was very calm. We finished in 5 hours which is good going. Nowhere to stop on the way again. Passing through tiny little one-street towns, usually with just a service station. Today even most of these seemed to be closed.

Just outside Larned we came across the historical site of Fort Larned. We expected to see the remnants of an old-fashioned stockade or a modern recreation, maybe with life-size figures on the ramparts. Want we got was a twee little set of bungalows around a well-kept lawn. It wouldn’t have been out of place in the home counties. Camp Larned might have been a more appropriate name.

I’m a bit worried that the endlessly repetitive, long straight roads are beginning to have an effect on Mike. He has adopted a strange mid-Atlantic accent and is talking more and more of staying on in the USA; “my kinda folks and my kinda territory”. Yesterday, he suggested that we could travel the country as strolling players. He would do a “soft shoe shuffle” while I played the accordion. He has even started referring to himself as Mr. Bowdangles. The sooner we get to Colorado the better.

We reached Ness City at one thirty and found the Derrick Inn motel easily enough. Highway 96 suddenly becomes East Sycamore Rd. and there it is on the left. Just as abruptly the road turns back into Highway 96 on the other side of town, about a mile down the road (We will be staying on the same road for the next hundred or so miles until we reach Colorado.) The motel is a bit 1960 Soviet Republic from the outside but inside it is light and airy with an attractive pool in a sort of atrium. A bit of a find in such a small place. Ness City has the usual small town centre but it has a distinctly Western feel. You could easily imagine a gun fight in the middle of the main street, say 150 years ago. Dodge City is only about 50 miles away.

Lunch was in the Cactus Club. It sounds quite exotic but it’s just a basic but friendly diner that sells beer. And that’s all you really need after 64 miles.