Pony Express Here I Come

Heading to St Joseph MO to do the first segment of the Pony Express Trail.  

The trail starts in St Joseph and finishes in Sacramento CA. My friends and I are doing the 1st segment of the ride (there are 5 segments) which ends in Kearny NE. For logistal reasons, we are starting in Kearny and ending in St Joseph as it was decided that this was the better direction. 

I am going with some guys I meet on the Santa Fe Trail Ride a couple of years ago plus one other friend that joined us for our Nachez Trace ride. We lost one rider to a dislocated shoulder. We are sagging so this means that we share transporting our gear each day as well as to provide rider support. Total trip should be about 400 miles and we plan on taking 7 days to complete.  

The trip is mostly gravel, so racking up more than 50 miles in a day will be a challenge. First time on gravel for me. I re-built my 1995 Trek Mountain bike to handle the gravel (50mm tires, a tune up , larger rear cassette, etc). In hindsight I should have bought a new bike - but there is no more room in my bike workshop ("8 is enough").

My bike has now shipped and waiting for me in St Joseph’s MO. I decided to include a Apple Air Tag in the bag and I tracked it from the time it left Florida to the time it arrived at my friend's house in Missouri. Pretty interesting to see where the bike travelled with UPS.  First day the bike travelled over 900 miles.

We doing a combination of camping and hotelling.  To be honest there were not a lot of choices on where to stay - so we focused on staying in locations as close to the trail as we could find that also have food options for breakfast and dinner.

That worked in most places except Oak NE (pop. 55 and the 473rd largest city in Nebraska ) where the only campground was labelled as "primative".  Which meant no running water and no indoor toilets. One of the riders, Russ was able to work some magic with some fellow churchgoers and he found us a place behind the "school" that supposedly have some flush toilets. Should be fun!

I take a flight to Kansas City on Weds 6/2002023 and the ride begins on Thursday. I am hoping we get to tour a lot of historical sites as this is the actual trail that the Pony Express riders took to deliver the mail out west.  

Here are some quick videos about the ride.

Pony Express Trail Video 1

Pony Express Trail Video 2

Time to Ride

Boys:   We plan on riding about 400 miles on the Pony Express Trail.  That is like driving to Tahoe and back in the same day.    

We are starting in Kearney Nebraska and ending in St Joseph, Missouri.  The Pony Express trail was created about 200 years ago to carry mail from St. Joseph to Sacramento California. The route travelled from Missouri, through Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. 

They would put the mail in a pack on a horse and the rider and horse would travel about 75 miles to 100 miles a day.  Then the rider would change horses every 10-15 miles and continue on until the mail got to Sacramento.  Every so often they would also change rider.  But the mail never stopped moving.   The trip was abgout 1800 miles long and it took 10 days for the mail to reach California.

The rider would turn around and head back to St. Joseph with mail that needed to be sent back to the East.

Today there is a museum in St Joseph Missouri.  We are ending our ride there next Tuesday and I am hoping it is open when we get there so I can take more photos.

I had to ship my bike to the start of the trail and then put it back together.  I am riding with 3 friends that I meet a couple of years ago when we rode the Sante Fe trail (this was the trail wagons used to travel out West 200 years ago).

We start our ride tomorrow and hoping I get some more photos on the ride.  If I see a rattlesnake I will try to catch it and send it to you guys.

First Ride Day

 Boys:  I told you I would get you a rattlesnake!!!

I was riding on the road and really wasn't looking down and all of a sudden this rattlesnake slithered in front of me.  Scare the heck of of me.  Luckily he was more scared of me.

Today was our first day of rding and I drew the short straw and for the morning I had to drive the truck.  There are four of us and here is how much gear we had to bring with us.  Coolers, clothes and all our camping gear (tents, sleeping bags etc).  

Here are the guys starting the ride.  

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Tom s a retired State Police Trooper, Russ ran a bank and Tom built telephone systems.  We are all retired and just like to ride long distances.  

We are riding mostly on dirt roads.  Here is and example.  It is hard to keep the bike riding foward without the bike slipping.  It took a lot of work not to fall over (imaging falling over onto a rattlesnake).

We stopped for lunch (peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches) in a little town that had a bank, a market and a flower shop.  Russ took over driving th truck and I got to ride the last half of today's ride.

Out total ride was about 40 miles.  Tonight we are in Hasitng Nebraska.  A long time ago when the settlers moved out here they had lots of fights with the native Americans.  There is a museum that has the following statue in front of it.  It is 2 boys being chased.  It you look carefully there is an arrow that goes through the first boy's back and into the second boy!!

According to the museum the boys rode until they lost the Indians chasing them and then fell off the horse together becasue of the arrow.  But they didn't die. Pretty cool.

Tonight we are staying in a hotel.  One one side there is a McDonalds and on the other side of the hotel is a DQ Ice Cream store!!!  

Ttomorrow we start camping and I hope we have ithe nternet so I can send you some photos of my tent.

And let's hope there are no snakes!!!

I finally have internet

 sSince we started camping we have not had any internet. Sorry about that.  Our first night of camping we stayed in Oak Nebraska behind a school.  The school has spots for 20 big RV's and our little tents.

It took me a while to figure out how to set up my tent.  I have not used it in 15 years.  I bought new tent pegs to hold up the tent - and they are back at the house in Florida.

It is pretty tiny - just about fits my yellow mat.  

At about 3 in the morning we got some huge thunder and lightning.  It was pretty scary as I thought we would be in the middle of a storm and get really, really wet.  But we lucked out and it did not raiin!

Before we went to bed the boys decided to wash some of their bike clothes  and hang them on the school swing set.

Today we rode about 50 miles and tomorrow we ride 54 miles.  Hope there is internet.

Riding through cornfields and farms

 We are riding on dirt roads for the most part.  On either side of the road is either corn or soybeans.  

It has not ained here in a month and so they use these huge sprinklers to water the corn.

When the corn is ready  to harvest these use huge machines to pick the corn.  

They load it on big trucks and then store it in large corn silos until they need it to feed their cattle - or sell it to companies and make your corn flakes.

The Bridge is Out!

We were on one of the dirt roads and all of a sudden we see the following sign...

We ignored the sign and went on riding the road as we did not have any other way to get to our next stop.  About2 miles down the road we found out why the road was closed.  The bridge had washed away.  So the group had to get off our bikes, wade across the stream and climb back up the other side.

The on the other side was an electric fence used to keep the cows in a pasture.  So we had to take down the wire (ouch) put our bikes over the fence and then put the wire back.

We knew we were on the Pony Express Trail when we found our first monument. 

This was where the riders exchanged horses.  the stable was shut down in 1964 after an Indian raid.

Some parts of the Pony Express Trail also was where the Orgeon Trail went.  

The Oregon Trail was use by settlers going from Kansas to Oregon by covered wagon.

Black Squirrels

 Today we ended up in Maryville.  I think it is in Kansas but not sure.  We might still be in Nebraska.    No we are in Kansas.  On the ride roday we pssed an old school house that kids went to a 100 years ago.

How would you like to go to school here?

We also passed a farm that had the following mail box. 

Guess what animals they raised?

Marysville is home to the Black Squirrel.

Seems that back in the 1800's a carnaval came through town and they has black squirrels in cages.  According to legend, a little boy came in during the night and let all the squirrels out.  Today 200 years later there are now lots of black squirrels.  So the Town decided to celebrate the black squirrels.  

n 1972, the Marysville, Kansas City Council passed an ordinance to name black squirrels as the city's mascot and to protect them. The ordinance proclaimed that any harm made to a black squirrel would be a misdemeanor.  Also that black squirrels had the first chance at any walnuts that fell from any tree,

They also had a contest to see which company painted the best fiberglass squirrel.  The one in the picture is at the Pony Express Barn downtown.  I think there were at least 36 squirrels decorated.

They were able to save on the the barns where the horses were kept.  

Unfortnately the museum was closed today.  

We are hoping to actually get in a barn when we get to St Joseph, Kansas - if we can get there before it closes.  We have a 55 mile ride that day so we will have to leave super early to make it.