Tuesday, June 21, 2022, Day 21:
Good day except I ruined another tire - this time the back tire on my road bike. I put in a tube and made it to Bismarck, which was about 100K into the day. There I got a new tire and we took an extended lunch break. We debated staying there, but weren’t getting a good vibe from the town and decided to move on.
I rode bike paths until I was southeast of the town and then got on infrequently-traveled farm roads. We up twenty or so miles later and decided to try for Hazelton. Supposedly, we could camp in the town park. Sheri went ahead another 25 miles and checked on me. I was feeling fine and she went on to Hazelton to check it out. Thirty minutes later she reported that the site looked great. I rode on, rolling pretty smoothly to 100 miles, but had a really sore butt for the last ten miles to camp.
The camping, in the town park, was right next next to a playground with lots of kids playing. These were young kids and the sounds of joy filled the area. Amazingly, the public bathroom in this park had a shower! With plenty of hot water. And was really well maintained. I took a shower while Sheri did her usual walk around town to check things out.
Also at this site were covered picnic tables and we cooked and ate dinner there. No other people were in the park past 6:30 p.m. and we had a quiet, restful night.
Wednesday, June 22, 2022, Day 22:
Woke up to so many different bird chirps that I thought I was sleeping in a tropical rain forest. I also slept pretty late (5:50). The morning was clear and a bit chilly (50s), but still. The forecast was for some more tailwinds, but considerably lighter.
I got going early today, just to give us more options. Our maps told this there was a zone after Gackle with no services for 73 miles. And it was 63 miles to Gackle, so… Anyway, I rolled out and biked on good roads through farmland. Some huge farm equipment passed me going both directions. These rigs are really wide with HUGE tires. If I had crouched low on my bike one of them could have driven right over me, without touching me. I only saw three of these beasts, but not many other cars either. I’d get passed about once per mile or two. It was very nice riding.
Speaking of beasts, I saw a few weasel-type animals. They were small and cute and at first I thought they were tiny prairie dogs, but no. They disappeared into the grassland before I could get a photo up close.
Sheri caught me after 41 miles and I’d ridden that in two hours, so I was rolling along at around a 20 mph average and would do so for most of the day. We next met in Gackle, at the 100K point and thought we might stop there, even though it was only 11 a.m. Just because I did 110 miles ht day before and maybe I needed a shorter day to recover. I was feeling fine, but I was also fine stopping early and just relaxing, reading, maybe writing in my blog a bit. We walked the few hundred yards to the Tastee Freeze and I got an awesome coffee milkshake. It’s rare when I place offers these and they are my favorite. I also got some onion rings and Sheri got a shake as well.
We walked back to the park and read for another hour and then toured the park for camping sites. All the good flat sites were taken by a large group of families there to fish. They were all gone at this point, but they started returning from the lake a bit later and I queried some of them. We figured it was going to be a long, noisy night and decided to move on. So, after three hours, I hopped back on the bike.
Conditions were great and I met Sheri at the 85-mile mark. We were now in the “desolate zone”, according to our map. We were ready to just find a spot to get off the road a tiny bit and sleep in the back of the Jeep, if we had to. Sheri found a tiny town called Marion on the map that was just 1.5 miles south of our route. She used satellite images to find a place were we could park and we agreed to meet there, or go on, if we had to.
She got there and found the town park. She asked lady working there if it was okay to camp in the park and she said sure. A small bathroom, with running water (no showers, of course) was there too. She’d found our camping spot.
I arrived at 4:30 p.m. and did a quick sink shower. I relaxed, read, and ate, while Sheri did her usual town tour. She found the only restaurant in town, TJ’s Bar and Grill, and we headed there for dinner around 6:30 p.m. I had a great burger and fries and Sheri just had a snack. We stayed there until nearly 8 p.m., watching the first period in the Avalanche game. The place was nearly deserted. Just two other ladies were there and they left after thirty minutes. Then a guy came in and sat down. I talked a bit with him. Chris was from South Africa and had framed there all his life, but said that you can’t farm in SA anymore if you are white. If your farm is successful, it will be taken by armed blacks and the government will not stop them. If they try to defend their land, they are prosecuted. He says it has been getting worse every year since the fall of apartheid. Obviously, that sucks for the whites, but really for everyone in the country. I’m sure the blacks view it as payback for a century of apartheid. Anyway, Chris now comes to Marion, North Dakota to farm nine months of the year. He returns home only for three months in the winter. He loves this little town and everyone we met felt the same way. The town has lots of big, public lawns, not just in our park, and they are all maintained very nicely. Actually, that was the same in Gackle. These are pretty, tiny (100-200 residents) towns.
I went over 40% of the milage today. My totals are 1664 miles and 59,202 feet of climbing. We are 36.7% of the way through our 60-day target, so we are a bit ahead on the mileage. At this point I’ve been averaging 73.7 miles per day. I need to average 70 miles per day to get the trip done in 60 days
Thursday, June 23, 2022, Day 23:
One of the best things about riding 80-100 miles per day is that I don’t worry about what I eat. At all. If I’m hungry, I eat until I’m not. It is sounds good, I eat it. In Medora, I got on a scale and, though it was hard to read precisely, it showed 158 pounds. I’m usually between 165 and 168 pounds (yes, I have a huge range). This is about where I was after hiking the John Muir Trail. I eat so much every day (two breakfasts, two lunches, sometimes two dinners) that is hard to imagine that I’ve lost any weight, but I’m sure that’s the end of it. I suspect I’ll settle around 160 while this trip goes on. I’ll fatten back up afterwards, like I did after the JMT.
Today was a tough one. On paper, or rather, on my phone it appeared straight forward. What I didn’t know was that I’d be riding a lot of dirt and gravel, so I got my road bike again. The first town was Kathryn. I rode east on pavement and then turned north for a few miles, also on pavement. I dropped down into a dell and the loaded meandered. It was great riding, but then my directions had me turning right onto a gravel road. I almost ignored the directions, but I knew continuing north from here wasn’t good, so it was turn onto gravel or turn around and go back.
The gravel was a bit chunky on my 25mm tires, but I was okay. I dropped into the tiny town of Kathryn and then I was directed to turn left and the road got smaller and chunkier. I climbed up a short, steep hill in my granny gear. At each junction, I hoped the road would turn backed to pavement, but I had no such luck. The roads became a single lane and then…the road went straight through a lake. Seriously. I could see the continuation of the road on the other side of the lake. Clearly the lake isn’t here most of the time.
I wondered what to do. The roads had been getting worse. Should I backtrack and take another way? I had only one bar of service, but I sent a text message to Sheri: “The road goes into a lake.” The water ran to either side for a good distance, but I thought I could maybe circumnavigate the lake on the southern side. I put my bike on my shoulder and crashed through chest high wheat to shorter brush. The footing was soft dirt and reasonable in my road cleats and I kept working my way south and east. Eventually I got to a stream of water that seemed to continue south for quite a ways further. Maybe a mile.
I was tired of this and just wanted to get to the road on the other side, so I took off my shoes and socks and waded the 30-foot-wide water. The cool, soft, very sticky mud felt great on my feet, but it also stuck fast to them. On the other side I just put my shoes back on and kept on walking to the road. Once there, I mounted my bike and rode east to the top of a crest. On the other side, coming towards me was Sheri in our Jeep. What a great site. I knew I could continue this direction and wouldn’t have to re-cross the lake.
I stopped when I got to Sheri and laboriously washed the mud off my feet and my shoes. I’d done just thirty miles in two hours, despite doing twenty of those miles in the first hour. I continued on the dirt road until I hit pavement. The gravel got very chunky and was quite marginal on my road bike. I should have switched to my gravel bike when I met Sheri. After three miles I was once again on pavement.
My troubles were all user error, I'm sure. I just blindly followed Google Maps. That doesn't always get you what you seek. The experience reminded me of the Office episode where Michael follows his GPS directions and drives into a lake. I actually thought about riding into this lake, hoping it was shallow enough to get across. But it clearly was deeper than I was tall and swimming with a bike didn’t seem like a smart decision.
It was hot too. It was the first day that I felt hot on the bike, though it was "only" 84. We had a day of 84 earlier, but it didn't seem as hot on the bike and I think the peak heat came later in the day, though that day was tough too.
Today seemed harder than the previous two days of 100+ miles. It goes like that sometimes. I switched from my road bike to my gravel bike for the last 22 miles and I should have been on the gravel bike all day. I rode a lot of single-lane, used-only-by-tractor dirt roads. I was really hot and drained by the time I pulled up to the hotel. Sheri met me outside and directed me to the room.
I’m writing this while ensconced in a very air-conditioned hotel room. I definitely needed a shower and some relief from the heat. I'm surprised by the almost complete lack of trees in Fargo. I guess I'm only in West Fargo now, so that judgment is premature. Also, I thought this town was always frigid. In honor of being here, I told Sheri that we should watch the movie "Fargo" and she nixed that idea immediately. She's seen it before and it gave her nightmares. I really like the movie.
At one of my breaks, Sheri was sitting in a folding chair next to me when she jumped up and started swatting away at her legs, saying that a spider was on her. It was quite the reaction and I asked, "Was it a large spider?" and she gave me an exasperated look and said, "They are all large." Indeed.
Sheri gave me great support all day, per usual, and found this nice motel. Sh was waiting for me outside and had already carried up all my gear. She is so awesome!
Friday, June 24, 2022, Day 24: Minnesota, Don’t Ya Know
Today was a tough day, at least at the start. Looking out our hotel window, we could see the trees being thrashed by the wind and with an impending monster thunderstorm, we almost took the day off. I ventured outside and deemed conditions ridable, but it was probably the worst wind I’ve ridden in so far. That’s a strong statement, I know, but the difference was I was fresh when I started fighting these winds, the brutality only lasted two hours, and I had a good attitude of just going whatever pace the winds allowed.
The winds were blowing almost due north, which meant they were mainly crosswinds for me, but my route went south to begin with and the best I could manage was 8-9 mph. It took me two hours to cover 20 miles, but mentally, I was completely fine. Our goal was just Detroit Lakes, 60 miles away, so that we could have shelter before the storm hit.
I was worn down by the three previous days, though, and I was feeling the effects on this ride, but just kept my effort pretty low. The weather was holding so I didn’t feel any pressure to try to ride faster. Because of my fatigue I didn’t even get on the bike until 10 a.m. I just wasn’t motivated early in the morning and wanted more time to eat and rest. Sheri went off to run the trail along the river and was gone when I left. She met me after I’d done 22 miles and then again after another 17 miles and finally with just three miles to go. That support was so uplifting. I didn’t feel hot, but I was sweating a lot and drank quite a bit.
I didn’t see a sign saying “Welcome to Minnesota” but knew I was in the state when I crossed the river. I also didn’t see a single Lake for the first 30 miles of Minnesota. this is the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” and I expected them everywhere. I wonder how big of a puddle counts as a lake in this state. I did see a bunch of small lakes and my route weaved around many of them. These aren’t the spectacular alpine lakes of the Rockies and Sierra, but more like farm lakes, at least so far.
It was a pretty day and the weather would have been fine if not for the wind. A big storm is forecast for tonight, so we are holed up in another hotel. That’s good for my recovery as well.
At my last meetup with Sheri, she said the next turn was onto a gravel road. The map showed a twisty, turn-laden route into town and I suspected it would be mostly gravel and dirt roads, so I switched from road bike to gravel bike. In the end, I only rode a mile of gravel, on the road that Sheri had scoped out. It didn’t matter, though. My gravel bike works great on pavement and it was nice to have a different position and a different saddle.
My neck/back issues seem to be mostly behind me and my biggest issue now is my butt. I don’t know how Danny rides 200K in shorts with no pad. I’d have trouble riding 20K like that. My cycling bibs feel great for the first twenty or thirty miles and then I find myself having to move positions a lot. My two bikes are setup a bit differently on purpose to give me a new position. And the saddles are different, which helps. But I’m still sitting on my butt for 5+ hours a day and that still isn’t trivial for me.
The only room left in our hotel (others were sold out) was the King Suite. It’s an awesome room and we were glad to be in it, as the projected storm hit with some serious fury. It was a tremendous downpour with near constant lightning flashes. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in a tent, though we had nights just like that on the JMT. We even had a jacuzzi tub in our room, so we took advantage of that. The weather isn’t supposed to stabilize until nearly noon the next day, so we’re planning on another late start.
Oh, and this is a new state for me! I’d never been to Minnesota before now.
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