Atchison, KS

Home of Amelia Earhart, alternate starting point of the Pony Express (when it was feared Missouri was going to the Confederacy), and  MGP Spirits. 

Rail runs right through the center of town – a trail ever hour or so. You can sit at a crossing for 10 minutes as stock cars, oil tankers, or grain cars roll by. If you go down to 6th street, it goes over the train, so lots of auto traffic on 6th street.

A slight wiff of fermenting grains escapes the 5 story fermentation tanks. This is making spirits on an industrial scale – grain cars unloaded into grain elevators, elevators emptied into building size tanks and distillation columns. Impressive. 

The Missouri River is still quite muddy. Louis and Clark State Park is a good place to spend the night, it is back across the river to Missouri.