Day 39 Week 6, Wednesday 28 May 2025

Going from Sterling to Briggsdale Colorado today. 60 miles, not much between the two towns except the Pawnee National Grassland. Prairie as far as the eye can see. It was again a cloudy day, a bit warmer than yesterday. It was drizzling rain periodically but we missed any major storms. Yesterday at Sterling where we camped at the public park there, we had several nice people stop by to warn us of tornados and hail. There was a tornado warning in the early evening and it did look pretty dark out to the North. Looking on the radar there was some significant storms activity there, but it passed us by and we didn’t get any rain last evening. One lady said that there were 4 tornados recently in the area, so even though we are pretty far north, this is a tornado prone area with very unstable weather. We were told that the nearest tornado shelter was a church a mile and a half away. Our instructions were if we hear a siren, we all pile in to the van and head to the church! Of course the lady said tornados can appear quite suddenly, not giving enough time even to alert folks. I’m not sure I would take the van and try for a shelter a mile and a half away, maybe head to the bathroom facility which is a cinder block structure. Another fellow walking his dog came by and told us that crack heads frequent the park between midnight and 5 AM, so best lock up all our valuables. The bathroom facility toilet was missing a door and a toilet seat- maybe to discourage drug users?? What kind of place did Adventure Cycling put us in?? Ah, but there were no issues last night. No odd noises and all our bikes were still there when we woke up. I actually slept quite fitfully on my nice new sleeping pad that doesn’t leak!

The ride was good. I got a flat at 31.5 miles, just a quarter mile from where our support van was parked to provide water for the group at the halfway mark. Couldn’t find the source of the flat so I just changed the tube and it was fine. Simona had a flat on both front and rear tires! Our group has had a rash of flats over the course of the trip, but I guess that is par for the course. No big deal to change out a tube. Apparently there are goatheads in the area, small seed pods with nasty spines all over that get stuck in your tire and work their way through to the tube.

We stopped at a cafe where Arlen had parked the support van and had a nice lunch- I had a roast beef sandwich au jus. This place was in the middle of no where but had a nice bar area and the food was very good so it must attract the locals from miles around. We are camping in the gymnasium of the Briggsdale High School. Now that school is out the place was available for us to put our sleeping bags in the gymnasium and use the showers. Not much here in Briggsdale except the high school. There is a post office and a fire station, and there are some houses. It’s a fairly sizable high school so again they must attract kids from miles around. It’s lucky we are inside tonight as there are some storms forecast.

We passed through the Pawnee National Grassland park area. More really wide open spaces with nothing but prairie all around. We passed by some areas where cattle were grazing, a feed lot and some large cultivated areas, but mainly it looked like open prairie. The road was very busy- mostly trucks. Fortunately the shoulder was very wide and we could comfortably ride with trucks whizzing past at 70 mph.

Here are the RidewithGPS stats: