After 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, and we were happy to find this one unchanged.
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