Australian Road Rider — August 2017

STORY AND PHOTOS: BILL McKINNON

i

n Colorado, I follow Route 50 as it

descends to the Great Plains and follows

the old Santa Fe Trail through Cheyenne

and Arapaho Indian country towards the

state of Kansas.

I pull up for the night in Fowler, a town

small enough to have no chain motels or

fast-food “restaurants”. Instead, I’m in the

salubrious surrounds of Bushy’s Blue Sky

Motel for the princely sum of $48 and dinner’s

at the Tamarack Grill, just across the road,

where the culinary highlight of the trip thus

far is placed before me: a piece of home-made

banana cream pie the size of Tasmania. I think

it might just be the best $3.25 I’ve ever spent.

Breakfast the next morning is even more

spectacular. It’s the Tamarack’s “Breakfast

Burrito”: eggs, sausage, cheese and onion,

wrapped in a big tortilla and smothered

in green chili. Talk about a breakfast of

champions. I reckon I could power the Harley

out of here without even fi ring up the engine,

if you get my, err, dri ...

We’re in Kansas, Dorothy. Trump country.

Everybody fl ies the fl ag. Roadside billboards

proclaim the evils of abortion. Big, chunky

F-Series, Chevy Silverados and RAM pickups

are the locals’ trucks of choice, most with a

“Bambi Basher” on the front for protection

from errant local wildlife.

Kansas is a vast broadacre wheatbelt,

just like southern WA, western Victoria and

north-western NSW. So I ride on towards

an endless, dead-fl at horizon, inhaling the

aromas of agriculture: fresh-cut hay, cow shit,

superphosphate. Every 50km or so, an onion-

shaped water tower and wheat silo appears,

r Bleak industrial scenes are prevalent. This is working-class America.

r Yep, deep in the heart of Trump country. You’re not left guessing about political sentiments here.

68 | AUSTRALIAN ROAD RIDER

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