April 17: Meade to Coldwater, Kansas
We didn’t have internet access in Coldwater, so this post is a day late. I’ll let you decide as to whether it’s a dollar short.
We spent a rest day — Easter Sunday — in Meade, Kansas. We stayed at the Lakeway Hotel - Bed & Breakfast Inn. J.R. and Robin Knight are the innkeepers. J.R., Robin and their son Anthony were so friendly we really felt like family. Easter Sunday in Meade wasn’t offering much in terms of places to go to eat. Mid-afternoon, Robin caught us in the hallway and asked if we’d like to join them for dinner. Their restaurant is normally closed on Sunday so our initial reaction was to decline because we didn’t want them to have to cook for guests on their day off! Their friendly, outgoing Kansas “We’ll be cooking for ourselves anyway, so it’s no bother” was so powerful that it trumped any efforts on our part to decline. So we had dinner with them and it was fabulous and a great time! We heard stories about the hotel, about local politics, and about how the “slushy machine” at the local convenience store got spiked and for a couple of days was producing 99 cent frozen cocktails to all the local patrons. Pretty exciting stuff for little Meade, Kansas.
Today’s ride took us to Coldwater, Kansas. The route today took us through some fairly typical (photo to the left) and also non-typical (photo to the right) Kansas territory. The area between Meade and Coldwater has endless rolling hills and this Red Hills area (right photo) that reminded me a bit of southern Utah.
Along the way, we passed through a small town called Protection. It had an interesting sign about itself at the city limits.
After arriving in Coldwater, The Dream Tour took delivery of a QUALCOMM mobile tracking unit. This unit will be in the Bayer Mobile and will provide realtime data as to our location. So, you won’t have to rely on me updating the web site with our current location. This unit will do it automatically and also provide a history of where we’ve been. Pat will be able to send messages that will appear on the web site. Here’s a link to the map page:
http://www.thedreamtour.org/blog/dream-tour-current-location
This link will also appear on the web site on the right-hand side of the page.
April 18th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
We were unable to see a map page when we clicked on the link you provided. We’d like to know where you are so….. flip the switch on your GPS unit. I write to let you know that there may be a problem. M&D
April 18th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
The mobile tracking unit relies on cellphone service to report our position. So, if the unit is on AND there’s cellphone service, it will constantly report our current location. It the unit is off, the map should still report the last known location.
I think the problem here though is we attached the unit last night and verified that the GPS unit was getting a satellite signal. Unfortunately, we’re in a part of Kansas where the cellphone service is fairly spotty. We noticed last night that the tracking unit was NOT getting cellphone service. Today, it’s the same way. So, until we get cellphone service, it can’t report our initial location or our location history. We should, however, get cellphone service tomorrow as we pass through the Interstate 35 corridor. In the meantime, you can see our current location here: