Our quest to ride in every state in America landed us in Vassar, Kansas, a one-horse town about 30 miles south of Topeka, at a trailhead for the Flint Hills Nature Trail. Thankfully, we’d read that it was near a grain silo, otherwise, we might have missed the small dirt clearing we used as a parking lot.
The seventh longest rail-trail in America, the Flint Hills Trail stretches 117 miles across eastern Kansas on what used to be the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Today, it is a crushed stone path with occasional pieces of shale and deeply rutted soft dirt that, at one point, caught one of Kellie’s tires and caused her to careen into Jim. The riding was slow and bumpy the first several miles and we kept a tight grip on our handlebars.
