10/26- Sleeping On Either Side of Kansas

The night wore on in an absolutely freezing way. I must have slept at some point in there, but I couldn't even guess for how long and definitely wouldn't even be sure that I did. By 4:30am I decided I had at least laid down long enough and it was time to get up again. I was bored mostly, and wanted to get walking again to warm up. Feeling around for the zippers at the mouth of the bivy I felt ice from the condensation that had frozen over there. When I did poke my head out the bivy and my bag were completely covered in ice. On top of that, my foot, the entire night was itching like crazy. I had decided that I was either wearing my socks for too long of a stretch, or I'd gotten into some poison ivy back in Willits, CA.

Through a long, painstaking process I pulled myself out of the bivy and got myself dressed and packed. I stuffed the bivy in with the frost still on it having no idea what else to do about it other than sit still for the sun to come up and warm it off. Once I did get walking, though, it was quite beautiful. I figured out that I think I was walking into the sunrise right around where I'd walked into the sunset and made camp the first night I saw the glow of Denver six years ago and got all excited about it.

I walked for another good ten miles or so that morning as the sun slowly rose over the empty road. Around 9am, I took a break for a little while and thought about making some oatmeal until I discovered the water in my camel back still needed to thaw. Not long after that I was walking over a hill and a work truck blew past me, then clearly had a change of heart and suddenly slammed on the breaks. I ran for it, hoping he wouldn't change his mind again.

Steve was feeling a bit grumpy that morning, as he'd thought he was going to have the day off until about 6:30am. He was near Denver then and found out he needed to be in Holdrege, Nebraska by 7am. It was now 9-ish and had another 5 hours to go to get there and he could care less when he got there. He later told me he thought about blowing by me, but when he did he thought about how long and desolate that road is and couldn't imagine stranding anyone on it. The theory works, though I do feel a little guilty that I'm preying on pity.

Steve and I had good on and off conversation most of the way. Mostly he grumbled about work and such things. We'd stop for coffee along the way, and by 3pm or so he pulled into Holdrege and let me out at the center of town. I made my way to the library from there to figure out were to go next, but all the computers were used up. It was a cute little town, but by 4pm I was making my way out of it only to be picked up by two college kids.

Andrew and Jaime were tooling around running errands and had seen me taking a picture of the town sign for Funk, NE up ahead. They got a kick out of that and on their way out again picked me up for a ride into Kearney, about 20 miles off. As we rode there we got to talking about things and Andrew got all wrapped up into talking about these cars he rebuilds. Jaime had decided that there were better spots to drop me off at than the ramps and truck stops they were going to be near, so she said if I was fine with going with them on their errands they'd take me to a gas station on the east side of town right by I-80 seven miles east of there. Sounded good.

Once we'd done their chores picking up car parts they kept to their word and drove me down the highway to exit 279 leaving me at a Shell station there. I waved goodbye to them, but on the way set my sights on a billboard I'd seen for a Pilot station at exit 300. I waited for them to leave then walked up the road a bit toward US-30 which I knew wasn't too far off figuring I could hopefully hitch a ride from there to the truck stop. It was three miles off.

An hour later, with no luck thumbing it, I finally got onto 30 just as the sun was nearing the horizon behind me. It was a busy road, but it suddenly seemed like one of those roads that are so busy nobody stops on them. Again, there was a freight train to my right which I kept eyeballing, thinking now I would definitely hop it if it wasn't going so damned fast on that track. I walked another hour or so as the sun set and began seriously considering places to drop down for the night.

I was starting to see my idea as futile and was eyeballing the dead cornfield across the street as a perfect refuge from the wind as well as a hiding spot. Along the ground by the tracks were inch thick broken up boards of styrofoam that would be perfect for bedrolls for the night. Things were lining up to stop there and make camp. I didn't want to make the same mistake as I had the night before of passing up a perfect set up only to walk a mile more and end up freezing again. The difference this time, though, was that for whatever reason it just didn't feel right to stop there.

At this point I had physically stopped walking and was looking at all these options. Behind me, to the west, down the road the sun was well sunk in the ground now and still no one was stopping, to my right were the boards of styrofoam, to my left was the corn fields to tuck into, and straight ahead of me was a sign for Gibbon and I was getting a strong feeling that I should keep going at least to Gibbon for the night. I decided to go with the gut and walked about ten feet before a car pulled over.

Hector was right at his turn to go left and be home. I really don't know why he stopped for me, but he did, and when I told him I was trying to get to the truckstop twenty miles up he told me he'd take me the whole way. Weird. As we drove I found out his brother was also waiting for him to get home so he could use Hector's cell phone to call his girlfriend, and Hector figured he could wait. Again, weird that he'd pick me up and go 20 miles out and 20 miles back out of his way to drop me at a truck stop.

The other strange part was that when we got close to the town of Wood River he told me he was going to take a backway he knew to get there because he didn't want to go through that town. Apparently his ex-girlfriend of ten years ago who he was still in love with lived there and he didn't want to see her. Down that back road we saw one other car and he told me it was hers.

When he dropped me off at the Pilot I went inside to use the bathroom. I came out from that, looked around the store for a minute, then sat down at a table figuring I'd charge up my cellphone there while leaving my bag in a good place to advertise that I'm looking for a ride. I barely touched the seat before a trucker came over and started talking to me. This was Don.

Literally within minutes of arriving at this truck stop, through already interesting circumstances, I think, I had caught what would turn out to be the longest ride to date. Don was just tired and wanted some company on the road. He told me he was going to a place just south of St. Louis and I was welcome to ride for as long as I wanted. I jumped at it, and that night spent the night at a truck stop in St. Joes, MO.

I had to laugh when we parked there later that night because when I'd set off going down US-36 in Colorado I thought it'd be neat that I'd get to add Kansas to my little list of states I'd hit on this trip. I'd really enjoyed walking through the state back in '03 and was looking forward to traveling through it again. The route Steve took to get to Nebraska took us within 10 miles of the western Kansas border, where Don and I slept that night was about 3 miles east of it.