Day 40
July 11th, 2007

Today's ride started off on the wrong foot. I let my group out of lodging and missed the first turn taking us about 5 miles out of the way...whoops. To my defense the arrow was on the right side of the road and there was a car in the turning lane blocking us from seeing it. However, because we went out of our way we got to visit Wright Kansas. Yay! The day was mostly overcast with unique looking wavy clouds. That was when I realized we are pretty much in the middle of tornado alley. During the ride we passed through that area that used to be the home of Greensburg Kansas. Greensburg was completely demolished by a category 5 tornado. There is no possible way for me to describe the damage that we saw. Try and imagine a small town with a main street, then imagine that where every single building is there is not just a pile of bricks or wood. Most of the trees had been stripped of nearly all of their leaves. It is so hard to imagine after seeing the town that only 8 people were killed in the dissaster. I chose not to take pictures out of respect for those who lost everything they had but I found this aerial photo online that shows the damage. The ride into Pratt was 80 miles of mostly flat roads We went through a few really small towns that had a lot of interesting little statues. Once into Pratt we set up lodging in the municipal building that held a basketball court, big theater style balcony seating, and a stage that must be used for plays. For dinner we got the opportunity to hang out with the archery club of Pratt. Most of them used traditional bows as opposed to compound bows. We shot at some cool fake foam animals. After I got the hang of it I was able to hit a medium sized target from 40 yards out. For dinner they cooked us some amazing steaks that was just what we needed after the day's ride.