What a crazy night we had! We like to set up our tent under a pavilion because if it rains, its nice to have everything nice and dry, but that wasn't the case last night. It was about 12:30 when it happened... we woke up to a waterfall of water pouring through the vents at the top of our tent. The vents have a little "roof" over them so that when it rains the water can't get in, but this water was coming up from the ground. At first we though someone was spraying us with a hose, but when we looked outside we realized the sprinklers in the park had come on. Now these were not just little sprinklers, they were more comparable to a small fire hose, lots of water coming out with a lot of force. Everything in the tent was soaked including our sleeping bags and pillows. I guess I would compare the waterfall of water coming in to the water bucket in the water park at Darien Lake Theme Park, or at least thats what it seemed like when you wake up to something like that. To make sure the tent didn't get any wetter, Joey ran to the sprinklers (there were 3 right near the pavilion shooting water towards us) and turned them away from the tent. We figured they wouldn't be on for more than a half hour, hour tops because of the amount of water they were putting out. So for the next 25 minutes, I watched as Joe walked in circles, from one sprinkler to the next, turning them away from the tent as they rotated. This wasn't something that we could have know was coming because these sprinklers retracted back into the ground after they were all finished and you could barely see them, even when you were looking for them. The tent, pavilion, and our bikes were all soaked, but luckily at the time all of this happened, it was in the 40s, so it wasn't super cold. After the water finally turned off, we climbed back into our wet tent and sleeping bags and tried to go to sleep. We knew this would be something we would laugh at later on when we looked back on it. Neither one of us slept very good the remainder of the night. When we woke up in the morning it was really cold, probably in the mid 30s. We found Joey's front tire to be flat again, so after we had oatmeal we fixed that. Since we were both so tired this morning, we had a hard time getting going, and not to mention we were both a little cranky. By the time we were all packed, it was a little before 10. We stopped at Subway to fill up on water and then went to the library which opened at 10. After checking the weather and email we got ready to head out of town. When we came into town yesterday we had to turn off of the road we had been following, so we thought we had to go back east a little to catch our road (and thats what it looked like on the map too). When we got to where the road was, it showed that it went onto the I-80, so we headed back towards town. There was a strong headwind again today which wasn't making us very happy either. We made it part way out of town on the road we were looking for and then decided to stop at a store to decide what to do. We were both exhausted and the wind was going to keep us at a very slow pace all day, which meant we wouldn't make it very far. We knew the next "town" was at least 60 miles away, and there wasn't much of a town there anyway, and that there would be virtually nothing in between. I was pretty sure that the weather report said the wind was supposed to be coming from the NNW tomorrow, which would be to our benefit, so we decided to head back to the library to take a second look at the weather. In the end, we decided to just stay in Kimball for another day. There is no since killing ourselves fighting the wind and not making it very far. After we were done in the library, we decided to get some cereal and milk for lunch. We ate at the tables inside the grocery store and then went across the street to a different park than we had been to last night. There was a maintenance guy in the park so we asked him about the sprinklers just to be sure. He said that they shouldn't come on until Friday in this park, so we should be in the clear. He also mentioned that at one point a man set up a tent in the park and ended up being right on top of one of the sprinklers, I can't imagine what a flood he would have had in his tent, so I guess it could have been worse. This park was a lot better than the park we were in last night; it was fit with bathrooms which were open and outlets in the pavilion where we could charge our phones, etc. We spent some time calling family and then I went across the street to the store to pick up some stuff for dinner. Steak was on sale at the store, so we cooked steak to go along with our mac and cheese (I also bought another pack of cookie too =D). After washing all of our dishes in the sink, we got camp all set up and ready. My sleeping bag had been sitting out to dry and was mostly dry except for the bottom, but everything else dried out nicely. We rode 8.42 miles today, even though we didn't really go anywhere, so hopefully tomorrow we will be in Colorado.
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