Day One - Home to Salina KS
Miles: 819
Elapsed Time: 16:03
The time had come to put all of our planning to work. We met Jim in Miamitown at 5:00 am and off we went. I had thought about many different routes including some with large portions of interstate, and some without much at all, but in the end I came to something in between. Jim hadn’t ridden many miles just in one day, so I though I would get some interstate riding and miles under our belt before veering off the easy path. Once we got started it wasn’t long before we had to stop and put on the rain suits. We were only on the other side of Indianapolis before we pulled off an exit and while on the ramp put our suits on. We stopped again at the Marshall IL exit to gas up and have some McDonalds. We were hopeful we wouldn’t experience anything like we did in 2009. I had contemplated getting off the interstate at St. Louis but in a last minute decision I routed us on the Northern by-pass and not exiting until we reached Kingdom City. On the other side of St. Louis at Wright City was gassed up again and removed the rain suits. We ran south on US54 down to Jefferson City using the same route as 2014 only this time we stopped to look at the state capitol building and to hit Prison Brews for lunch. We hit Prison Brews at exactly noon local time and we were pleasantly surprised. The had some good craft beer made on the premises and some decent grub, certainly better than prison food I would assume. The establishment gets its name from the surrounding area which is populated with government buildings including the old state penitentiary which was in use from its construction in 1836 up until 2004. We visited the penitentiary and the capitol building, which was built in 1917. We also walked around the grounds a little and viewed some of the statues and fountains. We still had a very big day ahead of us so we continued on. We were now staying on US50 and we stopped after only 30 miles to take a look at the Moniteau County Courthouse in California. Not as impressive as the state capital but it was built in 1867 and I thought worth a view. Back on US 50 the highway had converted from a four lane road to two-lane, but that didn’t slow us down any. In Warrensville we stopped at the Johnson County courthouse where we took some pics of the new courthouse building completed in 1898. The old courthouse is still standing but not nearly as impressive. It was approaching 4:00 local by the time we reached Warrensville and we figured we were a little behind time as our goal was to make Salina before the brewery closed. We got through Kansas City without much trouble and we were riding now mostly on US 56 fishing our way west. We stopped in Overbrook for gas and spotted a little lake with a nice grassy area surrounding it so we stopped there to get a rest stop in. We had 134 miles to go and it was a little after 6:00, so no problem. We continued following US 56 but once we got north of Harrington we turned due west on KS4 and found really good asphalt and a completely straight road with ample visibility on either side. Needless to say we made pretty good time getting to the Hampton. Once we unpacked and got situated we headed off to the Blue Skye Brewery in downtown Salina and had some good beer and some decent food. Neither were anything to write home about but all-in-all not bad considering where we were on a weeknight in mid-September.
