I've been home from the ride now for a few hours, but the boys that went up to White Cloud are surely still out on the trail somewhere! Can't wait to hear the reports!
139 miles today for me, and it was a really good day to ride. My day started when Kevin arrived at my house at 8:30. We rode the short haul over to Daryl's house. From there, we did a short sprint down I-435 to cross the river into KS and headed West to explore some roads I'd not seen before. In particular, I wanted to check out a possible abandoned road that was named on "4WD Rd" on one source I had. It is now a guy's long driveway and ends (for the public) at a gate between his house and barn. It was beautiful back there, but obviously private property now. So we continued North.
We rode a fun twisty road SW of Leavenworth and finally connected with the River Road somewhere in the middle between Leavenworth and Atchison. The parts of the road that were purely dirt looked to be very muddy and very difficult to ride, so we skipped those parts today--our planned route was not on them today anyway.
Daryl, Kevin, & I were the first to arrive at Paolucci's in Atchison. We arrived about 11:15. At about 11:30, 8 more riders showed up. Then a lone rider appeared on a big BMW. He was from the KC area and had never met any of the local backroads riders. Good guy!
So we were up to 12 riders for lunch--and the group that started in Lawrence had not arrived yet! They finally showed up in 2 groups totalling 8 riders. So 20 dirty dualsport riders took over the upstair's lounge/bar at Paolucci's. We had plenty of seating allowing us to be loud and really have a good time.
After lunch, the real men headed up to do the full "KS Dakar" while others went their own way. Daryl, Kevin, & I headed to the East side of the river and explored the gravel roads back to KC. We came across "the oldest church in the county", and I included a picture of it in my photo album.
We never got rained on, and while it got a little muggy in the afternoon, it stayed wonderfully cool while riding. I had a great time!
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