Tour of Kansas on dirt

I'm enjoying this. Born and raised in KS. I did a NE+KS dirt ride last summer and it was a lot of fun. I want to do it again sometime.

Have you seen this website?

http://www.kansastravel.org/

Very nice pics and looks like a good time.

I didn't realize kansas was so pretty. When is tornado season?, that would scare the living hell out of me, not knowing when you are gonna get pummeled...

Nice Adventure R's also...

Now. :eek1

Cool stuff Luc!

Two years ago I did what I call squaring the state (Kansas) with no prep I got up Wednesday AM packed a few things and took off on my C14, things had been difficult at work so I just took off. Had a great time did it all on asphalt took a route as close as I could to the state line without crossing over the state line it took me four days and I had a great time. The question the I was asked the most was where are you going, and then why when I told them what I was doing. Almost every one was very nice but you could tell they thought that I was al little nuts (in which they were right) Highway 36 is great.
ARR

Thanks for all the comments, I am glad you are enjoying it. I am typically more of a lurker than a poser so what I have something worth while to post about, I tried to return the favor to others and do a RR.

It is obviously taking way longer than expected;-)

At breakfast we have to wait for the cook, and she eventually show up, we can hear her in the kitchen, and all a sudden a big scream and she ask for the waitress to come and help her. RVsparky and I speculate that she may have hurt herself or something like that. Eventually the waitress comes back and as we inquire, she tells us that the cook just saw a spider...

Over breakfast we discuss about our game plan. It is Thursday morning and I am supposed to be back Friday to pick up my son from school. The more East we make it, the further RVsparky will have to ride back home. Because we do not know how far we will get and because I need to leave plenty of time on my hand to be back in Manhattan in time, we kind of decide that it will be our last day of riding together. In order to maximize the fun factor, we decide to move up and that we will focus our dirt riding when we get north. Therefore we jump on the highway and head north. While it was 100 degrees the day before, my bike is saying 46 and I had not really planned to be riding at those temperature. RVsparky is toasty, he had packed his heated gear.

After refuelling in Sharon Springs, we let the fun begin and we head to mount Sunflower!



For whatever reason, I love this place, since I came the first time when I first worked in western Kansas. I have come back several times since then and brought back people with me. Part of the deal is that it is not something you will see passing by you have to make a point to get there and it is far from everything. It is a beautiful place, makes you realize what it must have been like when the first settlers came to this areas and they were surrounded by the prairie.



From there we attempted to find a spot that was marked in the gazettier as horse thieves cave, but we did not find it. We pressed on to Kanorado and got to town by a nice 2 tracks from the SW of town.
RVsparky find us food at the senior center! People are really nice and visit with us.



As they prepare our food, we walk around the room, they have pictures for all the graduating class. it starts way back when I believe 1929 is the first set I found with 10 graduating seniors and it goes all the way to 2009 with only a couple...

After lunch we head for the fun part. Western KS is typically seen as being flat and it is for the most part, but when you get up to Cheyenne county, Rawlins or Decatur county, it is some fun riding with ups and downs and more importantly there are curves to the roads now and you can have some fun on the bike. This is I think my preferred part of the ride!

As a nice surprise when we get to the NW corner of the state, there is a nice road on private property I supposed that takes us to the corner, it is pretty well marked so it is easy to get to. I had seen it before on some ADVrider reports, but I did not realized it was there.









The first time we get to the Arikaree break we have to stop to take a couple of pictures








As we head east we see a sign for the horse thieves cave, since we missed it in the morning we head there and we find it!



I had read about it on here (ADVrider) and the information that was presented is that the back of the cave collapsed when they were doing the road behind it.

It is a beautiful area!







Then we keep on riding in this beautiful area and find a couple of places where RVsparky cussed me for them as there was silt





The route eventually took me to this nice 2 tracks, I was smiling in my helmet all the way through!







We eventually made it to Oberlin where we called it a day. RVsparky spent the night and I headed home!

track of day 2, 3 and partial day 4

I agree, I took 36 from Oberlin to Philipsburg to head home, it was great with the sun getting down behind me.

I grew up in the Kansas City area and spent five years at Kansas State before moving away, so I'm really enjoying this report. I miss the Flint Hills and Northeast Kansas a ton.

Yes this is a really neat place and that is why my wife and I decided to move back to manhattan. Lots of riding opportunities, different than Colorado though...

Sorry I missed the last part of the post. No I am not familiar with it, I checked it out, it seems that it would have a lot of nice information.

Thanks for taking the time to do the RR. I bet that silt was a blast and scary to ride in.

I may have to give this route a try it looks like you were within a few miles of my house

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Nice. I was stationed at Fort Riley for 3 years, Kansas riding was better than most would expect. Had an SV 1000 and a Harley Sportster at the time, stuck to paved roads.

You have me thinking now of an Ohio loop. Might have to map it out one of these days. I bet with lake Erie and all it would make for a good weak.

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I'm glad you found Horse Thief Cave. I have some friends that used to live in Atwood. We took an afternoon and visited the Breaks as well as the Cave. After seeing your ride report I'd like to do something like this as well.

Actually it was not very deep and not very long only a couple of miles. However we had probably rode already 300 miles that day so we took it fairly easy

Send me an email and I can email you tracks and route

Pretty decent dual sport riding indeed, especially for those big bikes...

Small world, one of my professor at K-State was from Atwood, I get to go there pretty regularly!

right back at you Sod We still have to get together for a ride at some point....