“I can see for miles and miles.
I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles
Oh yeah” - The Who
I’ve decided to change things up a bit and start referencing some of the songs on my playlist as inspiration for these blog posts. This might only last a couple days, but we’ll see. I’ll have some fun with it while it lasts. While this tune might have been more appropriate in the “other” Dakota, I hadn’t thought of it while I was there. Besides, it’s definitely not inappropriate here!
Before I get started in on today’s ride, a quick addendum to yesterday’s “Small World” theme, and it couldn’t be more on topic. Yesterday, I was waxing on about these rinky-dink little towns we went through that barely had any people and had no places to stop. The first such town we came to was New Salem, home of the world’s largest Holstein. I figured maybe a few of my work colleagues from Fargo might have heard of it or driven through at some point, but that would have been the extent of it. I found out today that a reader of this blog, Derek Nesland (he of Courts for Kids fame from an earlier post) spent the first year of his life in New Salem while his parents taught there and his dad was the basketball coach. Talk about a small world!
As for today, Claire continues to impress me. Prior to yesterday, she had never ridden more than 33 miles in a day. Yesterday, on her first day, we did close to 76 and we followed that up with 61 more today. She’s also doing this on a road bike that is definitely not geared for climbing hills. Fortunately, we haven’t hit any huge ones yet, but there’s been enough up and down to last her for awhile. At least today there was a nice payoff. First of all, we were dialed in a bit better than yesterday. We got on the road a bit earlier, and made sure we were reapplying the sunscreen at regular intervals. For a ginger and a former one, that’s a fairly important process that we don’t need to be skipping. Second, there were only two towns today, but they were well spaced out, about 20 miles to the first, 23 to the second and 17 to the finish. The first two stops both had sit-down restaurants so we could get off the medieval torture devices known as bike seats, and rest our buns in well-padded booths. We had a late breakfast and an early lunch, but the important thing was rest and shade and we checked those boxes.
The last stretch started a bit rough with some seemingly pointless up and down, and of course it was into the 90’s by then. Eventually, we got back to the interstate and rode on I-94 for about 9 miles. The first thing we saw was a sign that we were in Theodore Roosevelt National Park and would be for the rest of our ride. After about 4 miles of gradual up and down, we started to get the incredible views of the North Dakota Badlands. The icing on the cake was that the last 6 miles of our day, with one small exception, were spent coasting downhill. Finally, Claire felt a bit rewarded for all the effort she had put in to that point. Tonight we are in Medora, ND, population 129, but with perhaps 10 times that many people here in hotels and campgrounds close to the park. If we had a more leisurely schedule, we could go check out the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame or hike the Maah Daah Wey Trail. Alas, it is not meant to be on this excursion.
I’m a Colts fan. What can I say?
Can’t imaging the graduating class of that school is going to reach double digits.
Hard to do the views justice from a bike seat - while moving.
Medora is definitely trying to give off a “wild West” vibe.
That was our new friend Bennett taking our group pic yesterday afternoon. He’s much younger than I am and therefore much better at taking selfies. I tend to get a lot of pictures of my handlebars.
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