June 4 2008--day 2

They love "Fred" in the bible belt!
Nothing but Kansas Prairie
View from Mt. Sunflower
Me on Mt. Sunflower, No I am not in jail!
Mt. Sunflower, highest point in Kansas, Lets all rush out and make a pilgrimage!

I got and early start out of Greensburg this morning and started off on a leisurely pace. I stopped and had a great breakfast in Ford Kansas and stopped by Boot Hill in Dodge City, I poked around for a while and picked up a state of Kansas decal and added it to one of my luggage boxes. Originally I had planned to Summit Mt. Sunflower, (the highest point in Kansas,) ooh aah!
It was a little anticlimatic, there was nothing there other than a little marker in the middle of a cattle pasture, it was about 14 miles of dirt road to get there. I did sign the register and it appeared that 3 or 4 people a day make the pilgrimage. My original intent was to camp on top, but there were storm clouds rolling in and I thought better of it. Mt. Sunflower is just a mile east of the Colorado state line. I decided to head across the boarder and look for a hotel, as luck would have it I ran into a couple of other Motorcyclists from Ohio, they were heading to Utah, one of them was riding a Valkyrie and the Other a Gold Wing. Even though their engines were 3-times the size of mine, I decided to ride with them to Colorado Springs, where I am now. Talk about one hell of a ride. I was impressed that my little 1 cylinder 650 could keep up, but it was giving me all it could. We road across a back highway doing about 80 most of the time. We stopped outside of Colorado Springs at about 4:00pm they were going to go another couple hundred miles, I bid them goodbye and started looking for a room. I managed to hit rush hour traffic, right when the air force base was getting out. I got lost a couple of times, then finally found my way back towards the mountains.
Right now, I am at the base of the mountains and can see "Pikes" Peak outside of my window. I am at a hotel that has wireless Internet, however this mini computer I have uses a "Linux" operating system rather than Windows or Apple, I have yet to figure out how to up load my pictures, I do apologize and hope to add them in a few days, I have some good ones!
I road 450 miles today, that may not seem like much, but on a one cylinder motorcycle, that is a bunch, every joint and bone in my body aches, I am going to get a good nights sleep tonight then take my much anticipated assault on "Pikes" Peak in the morning, I am not sure where I will end up tomorrow, or if I will have access to the Internet. If I am not to sore, I may camp on a mountain somewhere. Take care I will update you as soon as I can.

Tim