Day 31: Wichita, KS to Nickerson, KS (64 miles), Day 32: Nickerson, KS to Rush Center, KS (87 miles)

We woke up in Wichita, said our final goodbyes, and started rolling through the city and began cutting northwest back towards the TransAm trail by Hutchinson. Like most days after rest days, I felt slow and plodded along the highway. We stopped in Hutchinson, grabbed some Ice Cream and saw the exotic animal farm in Nickerson, our destination for the night. We made friends in the library with Gay, the librarian, and Phyllis. Phyllis thought that it might storm (it did), and she hooked us up and let us stay in the Senior Center. Unfortunately, most places in Nickerson were closed to eat by the time we got moseying (at 630 PM), so we had a cornucopia of food from the convenience store to eat.

In the morning, we knew we had a solid tailwind coming and started jamming westward. The good news is that when you have an eastbound wind, you go really fast. The bad news is that when the eastern front and the western front collide, that the hammer is going to come down and it's going to storm hard. So, we rushed through, ate some food in Larned and got to Rush Center when it seemed the other shoe was going to drop. Luckily, the fire chief's wife saw us in the middle of the small town and opened up the fire station for us. We got in and took cover as we waited to see if there would be tornadoes (luckily not), lightning (yup), hail (the size of golfballs, or large enough to leave me permanently ugly). The power went out in town, but the beer store was still open after the storm passed through. We cozied up on the floor of the fire station and called it a night.

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