One of the best things about boondocking in city parks on the Great Plains is watching a girls softball game as the sun lowers. This woman appeared to be from Yates Center, just north of Chanute, where we were parked (her T-shirt said so) and her team was loosing. Bummer.
Earlier in the day we managed to get in a 47 mile ride, only one section of a square with a tailwind. We decided we had earned a stop at a the Cardinal Drug soda fountain when we got back to Chanute. I got a big one, and it was a whopper. We had been disappointed earlier in the day when we discovered Erie, a small town where Claire had expected to find a new-to-us old fashioned soda fountain, had been torn down, a new building built and the fountain was now just a non-working display at the new high school. This is happening more and more often. The machinery, the marble tables, the back bars, still exist, but no longer have a purpose, and soon there will be no one alive who knows how to make a real soda or Green River. However, in Chanute, the two young girls waiting on us made excellent sodas (cherry for me, strawberry for Claire) at Cardinal Drugs, using the proper wrist action and a perfect balance of fruit, soda and whipped cream. Oh my. Nothing like it on a hot humid day. We had been there on a soda-fountain themed tour of Kansas several years ago, and we were happy to find this one unchanged.
Nice to check in and see a cute picture of you two enjoying yourself! Yes, baseball and softball and camping in city parks reminds me of our bike touring overnights. I remember staying in one park and getting to know a group of young siblings, and when one fell down and skinned her knee they came to us for bandaging!
They intuited, correctly, that bike tourists would have the necessary first aid! Cute.
Green River???
It’s an old fashioned soda fountain drink, one of the most popular. It’s soda and a lemon/lime syrup, but nothing like a commercial soda. Nice on a hot day. Hard to find.