A Wrong Turn

Saturday was my day off. Everyone seems to flock to campsites on the weekends, so we had trouble finding a campground and wound up at a hotel on Friday night. Pierre is small. I usually play tourist on my day off, but there was only a cultural heritage center there. First though, we loaded up on supplies and attempted to go to a bike shop to have a professional take a look at the mess that had become of my rack bolts. It turned out they were closed, so my dad bought some epoxy, and we glued the mess back together. Hopefully that would reinforce it. My dad was making me pretty nervous about how well my bike would hold up. Would it even make it to the Pacific?

We decided to take the opportunity to go out on a car ride and explore. We found a nature preserve out on Lake Oahe with a boat launch and a silty beach and I went out to dip my toes in the Missouri for the first time. I took off my shoes and alked along the store. I sunk suddenly calf deep in muck. Shouting and laughing I struggled back toward more solid ground while my dad skipped rocks on the water.

We managed to get a campground on Saturday night. We stayed at Oahe Downstream Recreation Area, another spot near a dam on the shore of a large lake and section of the Missouri River. While these areas seem to be primarily used for boating and fishing, this one had a butterfly garden, a disk golf course and horseshoes. The next day I biked through farmlands, following route 1804 for miles upon miles, days and days. The mornings I’d bike my 50 miles to avoid the hottest part of the day and by afternoon we’d get to a recreation area and spend the rest of the day enjoying the breeze and the beautiful scenery. We walked down to the beach, and one evening we even swam in the Missouri!

In Akaska, SD I got turned upside down. The town had a population of 42. My dad stopped there to pick up a soda for us both. He asked if the population was really 42 and the cashier said it was probably less now. My bike maps show segments. Each segment is oriented horizontally and then there’s a compass rose to show which direction is north. So that day I turned in the direction the map turn was when north was in the opposite direction. So, I turned left when I should have turned right on a gravel road. Nine miles later I stopped at where I thought I was supposed to meet my dad. I was on top of a hill and my dad was nowhere in sight. I looked at my map and cursed to myself. Fortunately, I had cell service. I dropped a pin at my location and called my dad. I’d only made a mistake like this once before and it had added ten miles to my day back in Kansas and Missouri. It meant barely making it to the campground before dark. But now I had a support vehicle! My dad drove to my location. As I waited a man in a car saw me stopped on this gravel road so far from anything and chatted with me for about twenty minutes. It turned out he’d seen my dad up the road and asked if he needed any help. I had stopped beside an old, abandoned school building. My dad was fascinated by the building and was kind of excited by my happy accident, that it meant he’d see something he otherwise would have missed.

I pushed on the next day all the way into North Dakota. The campground was in Pollock, SD, just on the border, so we stopped in town for a soda and took a break. My dad and I sat on a bench together in the heat, enjoying a Dr. Pepper when a man from the South Dakota tourism bureau started asking me questions about my bike. I told him about my trip, and he told me he was actually from New England, that he used to do road bike racing. It seemed like a small world situation. I mentioned LewisandClark.travel which he was familiar with and asked for advice on a campground. He mentioned a historic marker about Lewis and Clark up the road. I pushed on to the North Dakota border and it was startling how suddenly the scenery changed. Suddenly I saw the flat tops of buttes everywhere. Just over the border I tossed my bike back in the car and my dad and I took a short drive down a dirt road to take pictures before heading back to the campground. It was the first bare bones campground we’d had to camp at. There were vault toilets and there was absolutely no cell service. Ironically, the only way to book the campground was by phone, so we drove back to town. I watched my phone and told my dad to stop the second I had service. I booked a campground, we filled up on gas and asked the attendant where we might get AT&T or T-Mobile service so we could at least catch up with family before we were completely without signal. It took some searching to find the potable water spigot, but on the search we found a flushable toilet. No shower, but at least some shade at our campsite. I could see the water from my tent and perhaps more importantly, sunflowers on the shore. I was obsessed with the idea of sunflowers in South Dakota because my mom told me the first time she went there, there were sunflowers as far as the eye could see. My dad and I went for another walk by the water and I took many, many pictures.

I put my bike in his car and he drove me back toward Akaska, nine miles in the direction I should have gone, and dropped me off so I could continue down my route without adding crazy numbers to my mileage. I stopped for the day after costing down a beautiful, long hill. I hit my mileage. The next morning, I would start on an equally long uphill. Once again, we stayed at a recreation area. So many of these places had kayak rentals, paddleboard rentals. Every time I saw the option I was mercilessly tempted, but I had exerted myself all day. Maybe I’d kayak on a day off, but if it didn’t work out with my dad, it probably wasn’t going to happen. Once again we went for a walk down by the water and enjoyed the breeze.