The Ride to Bismarck

In North Dakota I met with my first signs of smoke. I was told repeatedly that it was blowing down from fires in Canada, not the fires in Montana, but the particles in the air were enough to make the sunshine wildly. I couldn’t stop taking pictures on my first day in the state. We got to the campground at lunchtime, this time it was right on my route. The evidence of the drought was all over. This was the second night in a row that our campground had no plumbing. My dad and I were both stinky (though I’m pretty sure I was stinkier. There’s no point wearing deodorant when you’re going to sweat it off biking). The grass was crunchy and brown, and while there were trees everywhere, they had very few leaves to provide shade. When I got to our campsite, I immediately noticed a ground squirrel who seemed kind of curious about our arrival. He didn’t seem to be afraid of me, and I love me some rodents, so I grabbed a jar of almonds from the back seat, sat on the ground and tossed one at him. It wasn’t long before he came up to me, put his paws on m knee and took the almond out of my hand. I stayed there spoiling the little guy for a long time. I poured some water onto a ziplock bag, assuming that my new friend hadn’t had access to a lot of water because of the drought.

We went on an adventure, searching for ice and gas and found a little restaurant called the Road Hawg Grill, a little hole in the wall, plastered with old 1950s advertisements and motorcycle memorabilia. We drove around for a while, avoiding the heat by staying in the air-conditioned car, then finally went back to the campground and dragged a picnic table under the little shade we could find. Sat on opposite sides of the table, we each dove deep into a book, cooked our separate dinners on my camp stove, and waited for the sun to go down enough to go to bed.

We were very close to Bismarck, and my dad was set on having someone check out my bike after the trouble I’d had. I agreed. I wanted new brakes for the mountains, and I was hoping to get a new chain ring. I got up early and got to the bike shop just before it opened. Larson’s knows what they’re doing. They took me immediately, despite a backlog because I’m touring. They were done by the afternoon! We spent part of the morning in a coffee shop, then went to Double Ditch, across the river in Mandan. It was an archaeological site. It was a Mandan settlement. Thousands of people lived there through the 18^th century, when it slowly shrunk as their people died of smallpox and eventually spread out further upriver. It was not settled when Lewis and Clark were here, but it hadn’t been abandoned for long. I learned a lot and I got a joyful reminder of how much I already knew, after reading Encounters at the Heart of the World, a book about the Mandans.

We ran some errands. I got another thermos for ice water, and purchased the game Five Crowns. We’d learned that having something to occupy our time in the hours we spent at campgrounds would make the days go by. We spent the afternoon drinking ice water in the recreation area of our campground. I taught my dad Five Crowns and I think I got him hooked. Our campground was city run but it was huge and high quality. Plenty of shade, a disk golf course. We decided on a whim to run out again and buy some cheap frisbees so we could try our hand at disk golf. There was supposed to be a disk golf in the dark event there tonight and the idea of disk golf with led lights or disks that glow in the dark was incredibly tempting. Shortly after we finished our tester round though, the winds picked up. We had a campfire going (we were allowed to at this campground) when it started to rain). I was paranoid about setting the plains states on fire, so I went off with one of my giant thermoses to get water to put out the fire when we were done. Limbs were crashing down from the trees. I saw someone in a camp hammock swinging violently back and forth.

I didn’t really want to set up my tent that night, knowing that the weather called for severe thunderstorms and eventually hail, but it would be tight quarters for both my dad and I to cram in the car, so I told him if he helped me set up the tent then I’d sleep in the tent. I just didn’t want to struggle with it and the potential that it might fly away. I slept fine that night, got in before the rain got bad and it dwindled pretty quickly. Friday afternoon we attempted to go to the North Dakota Heritage Center. We went to their café for a drink, not aware that they closed at 4:30. We were in the gallery for maybe 15 minutes before they made their closing announcements.

We had booked the campsite for two nights, but my dad planned to leave very early Saturday morning to fly back to Boston. I needed a hotel room so I had somewhere to load my stuff (since I could no longer carry my panniers). My dad planned to leave very early Saturday morning, which meant I needed a room the night before regardless, so despite the second night booked at the campground, we stayed at the hotel on Saturday night and my dad left at 4 or 5AM. I was on my own for less than a day, catching up on Instagram and blog posts before my mom arrived in time for dinner.