Great Bend

I left Garden City Tuesday morning. Bill drove me out to the edge of town and I started walking. I made good time, though I didn't start early, and walked through the evening and into the early morning before getting to the town of Cimarron and camping in a park by the river.
Wednesday I stayed around town for the first half of the day, and then made it to the outskirts of Dodge and slept behind a hotel.
The weather had started turning as early as Monday, but not until Thursday did it produce anything. I stayed all day in Dodge - mostly at the library and wandering through the mall - and slept behind a church, where the rain found me. I had a wet night, but dried off in the laundromat the next day, and waited around some more for the weather to clear up. It didn't, and I stayed in Dodge all day, then finally decided to walk around nine in the evening. I made five miles before putting up my tent near the ditch, and stayed drier than the previous night, when the rain came, again.
Saturday I started walking early in the day. Made it to the little town of Spearville in good time and got some groceries, then walked another twelve miles on the day to get into Offerle, and slept in a picnic shelter. Another night of rain, and some hail thrown in, but I stayed dry.
Sunday I walked to Kinsley in the morning, and stayed practically all day. I visited the local museum and played solitaire for three hours at the gas station. In the late evening I started walking, again, northwest on Highway 56 - the first time I've left 50 since home.
I pushed on through wind and rain until two in the morning, and took shelter in the town of Garfield, outside the co-op building, a mile short of 2000, on the whole.
Yesterday I crossed the 2000 line, and walked to Larned, in the morning, and then holed up through the day. I found a piano at the community building and played for a couple of hours, then shot a basketball in the gym. In the evening I found a laundromat, and washed a load of clothes before making dinner. As I finished eating, still in the laundromat, a policeman came inside and said that some lady had driven up outside and seen me and freaked out, and that he was seeing what I was doing.
"Are you doing laundry, sir?" I said that I did some earlier, but that I was done.
"Well, sir, technically, when you've done your business here and then stay around, it's considered loitering." He continues to tell me that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing, and then decides it's best for me to get a ride to Great Bend for the night.
"I can't really picture any place you could stay, here in town," he says. "I'll call the county and they'll get you a ride up into Great Bend." He seems pretty set on the idea. I don't know what to say, because he doesn't seem to understand when I tell him that I can find a place to stay in town, and he still seems to be thinking about charging me with loitering. Eventually he puts me in the cop car and drives me out to the edge of town and drops me by the road and promises that the 'S.O.' will be coming in ten or fifteen minutes.
I sit for an hour, in the cold, and no one shows up, and so I start walking. In the three hours it takes me to get to the next town I see three sherrif's vehicles (or the same one three times) but none of them stop, and so I keep going until Pawnee Rock, where I find a picnic shelter to spread out under for the night.
This morning I made it the last thirteen miles from Pawnee into Great Bend. The weather is finally clearing up, and I walked in sunshine.