I didn’t manage to get my Thursday blog written and scheduled on my day off. I had a pretty big upkeep todo list. So Thursday’s post is delayed to at least this weekend when I reach Lewiston, ID and take another day off. If not, you can expect another blog on Tuesday. Here’s some pics of the mountains I’ve biked through this week to tide you over!
Cow Wrangling and Bike Wrestling
I have to jostle my brain around every time I sit down to write one of these blogs. I left off in Medora. I felt a bit displaced, so far from the Missouri River, a bit like I was missing out on what there was to see. Throughout this whole bike trip I’d been taking notes on descriptions, but I had a stint of about two weeks in country Lewis and Clark hadn’t even visited. I got out of the habit of taking notes. I only had a day or so to go before I was close to something moderately related. That Saturday I biked past the North Dakota-Montana border, to a town called Wibaux. I had a lot of fun saying that out loud. When I left Medora, I got to bike through badlands for the first time. I was fascinated by the idea of doing it, and I was tempted to bike in Theodore Roosevelt National Park on my day off, but I knew I needed to rest. Besides, it was blazing hot outside. Why deal with that if it wasn’t a necessity?
I’m glad I waited. I biked over a pleasant undulation of hills. The buttes shrank and diminished into farmland, then further along would pile up again in different variations of color red, yellow, and black striations.
I met up with my mom in Beach, ND, right on the border with Montana. My mom was fascinated by the fact that they sold work jeans and cowboy boots in the coffeeshop along with other gift items. I saw a scarf with a cattle brand print that I was fascinated by. I liked the idea of having an obscure patterned scarf that had a story behind it. When got to Wibaux my mom was on the phone with a friend. We had a bike rack attached to the trunk so I could throw my bike up and go to the campground at the end of the day. It had turned out to be a danger to both of us. We’d each hit our head on it at one point or another when closing the trunk. There was a learning curve. I made a point of organizing the car so we wouldn’t need to go into the trunk during the day, but evidently my mom needed something from in there, because she hit her head on the bike rack so hard while closing the trunk that it knocked her to the ground. I spent the evening monitoring her for signs of concussion. Fortunately, we dodged that bullet. We grabbed dinner at a nearby restaurant. Mom needed food so she could take ibuprofen. Unsurprisingly, she hurt all over.
I had made a reservation at a campground in Wibaux, but there wasn’t much shade and they didn’t even give us a picnic table to cook dinner on. We spent a long while in the air-conditioned car. My mom does this lot over sitting outside in camp chairs. In this particular instance, I got it. There wasn’t a whole lot of shade and we were wedged between RVs, which is always a bit claustrophobic. Finally, I suggested we weren’t far off from Glendive. Maybe there was something to do there. I decided to check LewisandClark.Travel. We’d been to Glendive before on the cross-country trip that inspired my Lewis and Clark obsession. Makoshika State Park made quite an impression on me. It’s known for paleontological digs. A few large-scale dinosaurs have been found there, and the place reminded me of Jurassic Park. When we visited in 2018 we were in a rush to get back Minneapolis for our flight, so we didn’t explore the town much. I knew there was a dinosaur museum, but it was probably closed. I found on LewisandClark.Travel that there was a bronze sculptor in Glendive who had what was called a “sculpture walk” in town. We went to the location specified and it was highly suspect. I’m pretty sure we found her forge, not the sculpture garden I expected. We wound up giving up and going to Subway to get dinner. We found a war memorial park to eat in right by a giant cut-out of a t-rex (evidently there was supposed to be a giant dinosaur in town too. I was hoping for something kitschy, but I deduce the dinosaur was a skeleton in the dinosaur museum. At the park in the middle of town, right next to the train tracks, I chased down two white-tailed deer, trying to get a picture of them. I had middling success.
We went back to our campground and the next morning I began my ride back. There wasn’t a whole lot between Wibeaux and Glendive. I don’t think there was even a town. Fortunately, that meant not a lot of cars on the road. I left early and arrived in Glendive before lunch. I solved the mystery of the sculpture walk, sculptures by the artist in question were all over town. We went on a search for coffee, but it was a Sunday, and it seemed like absolutely everything was closed. A few places said they were “at the fair.” The Rodeo was in town! I had been saying for probably a month that if I was in a town where a rodeo was happening, I was going to that rodeo. I’d never been before, and it seemed an exciting cultural experience. We were there pretty darn early too. Early enough to grab lunch at a food truck before the events started, early enough to look at animals in a petting zoo, and to wander the exhibit hall to look at children’s art and craft competitions.
We grabbed a shady seat on the bleachers. I told my mom I’d be good after an hour, but an hour in barely anything had happened. A whole lot of nationalistic business with a flag, and God Bless America, not even the national anthem! We wound up staying til nearly the end. The events were much shorter than we imagined. Highlights were Mutton-Bustin’, watching toddlers ride sheep like you might see a cowboy ride a bull. Then there was “wild milking” which all went so quickly I can’t recall what the steps were—tying up a cow in a certain way, milking it enough for the judge’s specifications? I particularly enjoyed event where they had to get a cow and two horses into a trailer. They competed in groups. One group, The Misfits, seemed to be there for the fun of the competition than for the chance to win. Another, gosh if I can remember their name…Something Diesel? High Octane? Something car related, was a group of all women, so I rooted for them the whole time. We didn’t stay to see who won, but they did well or passable in just about every competition.
After another day of empty, quiet plains and comfortable rolling hills, I made it to Circle, MT. On a whim we decided to take a detour to Fort Peck, about 70 miles. Fort Peck was one of the seemingly infinite number of recreation areas on the Missouri River, almost always at a lake created by damming. We drove through miles and miles of badlands. I was thrilled to be getting back to my precious river, and optimistic that we’d find a campground with adequate shade and a breeze off the water. Plus there was a visitor center that might talk about Lewis and Clark! I think my mom regretted the detour about half way through the drive, but I coaxed her on with the presence of a shower at the campground. She certainly regretted it when we got there a few minutes after the visitor center closed when it wouldn’t be open the next morning either. When we got there we read Dracula, our nightly campground ritual, and I highlighted everything I had biked so far on my mom’s paper maps.
At this point, my mom was experiencing all the aches and pains one might imagine from sleeping in a Toyota Corolla for over a week. I felt we were spending too much money on hotels. I had a camping hammock, so I offered to attempt to sleep in that so my mom could sleep in a tent and see if that treated her any better. I put my sleeping pad in the hammock, got into my sleeping bag and delicately placed myself on top of it. My mom had to tuck me in. I had tulle with me from when my dad was with me. I’d recommended it as a makeshift mosquito net so he could sleep with the windows of his rental car open at night. My mom tucked it over me like a burial shawl. I didn’t sleep great. Just because of where the trees were convenient, I was woken up every time a car came down the road to blaring headlights in my eyes. I was also conscious that I might wake up to a deer sniffing me. I knew this solution wouldn’t work forever. As soon as we got into bear country I wouldn’t be safe in a hammock, but we discussed that maybe investing in a tent that would fit both of us would be worthwhile.
My mom had as good a night sleep as one can in a tent, so it seemed purchasing a tent would be in our future. We drove the 70+ miles back to Circle, took some pictures in front of some cement dinosaurs, cuz why not? And I started biking towards Jordan. For some reason biking down this highway felt like an endless loop of the same scenery. Not to mention there was no shoulder on this highway and so much 18-wheeler traffic I was vibrating I was so stressed. By lunchtime I was frustrated with how few miles I had gone. My cables were acting up again. I assumed because of my recent bike repair in Medora. I kept on having to tweak them. So often in fact that I wound up converting my handlebar bag into a backpack and wearing it slung across my shoulder, so I’d have easier access to the barrel adjusters. It had become a common occurrence that I’d plunk my bike onto the bike rack and fiddle with the adjusters til they functioned enough to shift again. But no matter how much I tried to resolve the problem, it always wound-up being trouble again.
I usually track my mileage so I have a concept of how close my next rendez-vous point was, but that day I paused it on a break and forgot to start it up again. With all of the stopping and fiddling, the struggling on hills because I couldn’t get up hills in a comfortable gear and I couldn’t gain momentum downhill. I stopped at a visitor center to eat lunch with my mom and found out there was intense roadwork for the next eight miles involving a pilot car. We decided to strap my bike to the car and get me through the roadwork, since there was no way I was keeping up with a pilot car and a pretty consistent line of traffic.
Before I got biking again, I refilled my water bottle and shut the car door. I hadn’t put the lid back on and the water bottle fell over, ice water everywhere. The inside of it got lined with mud. I began to realize how stressed the truck traffic had made me. I’d felt like I was going to be run over by a very large vehicle all day. I snapped at my mom for no reason about how messy her stuff was in the back seat. I’d been having subtle shifting troubles all day, but when we got to the other end and I attempted to start biking again, my chain derailed. I was frustrated with it. I’d been tweaking the tightness of the cables for days. I fixed it, adjusted it, thought it would work again! I tried to pedal, and the chain came off the other way. I screamed I was so frustrated. Trucks were barreling by me as I tried to repair it. By this point I was in tears. I didn’t think I could, at least not on the side of a highway. Somehow the derailer had gotten so low it was touching the teeth of the chainring. With these trucks, I couldn’t think straight. So my mom drove me the next few miles into Jordan. We got a motel room and I attempted to fix it in the parking lot. I worked on it for at least three hours. I would get it working on the rack, feel I was making positive progress, and then the moment I tried to ride it, it wouldn’t shift.
I watched multiple Youtube videos trying to problem solve it, called my dad and asked for his advice. He was convinced I could fix it for myself, but the more I tried and failed the more I was convinced I was a failure for not being able to do it. I hit the four-hour mark when my mom convinced me to stop. We were likely going to have to drive to Lewistown the next day to bring it to a bike shop. I took my dad’s advice first and slept on it. The next morning, I fiddled with it for an hour or more to the same effect. It felt like with the angle and the fact that I was working on my bike while it was attached to my mom’s car trunk, I couldn’t possibly get enough strength to keep the derailleur from slipping down. That morning we wound up driving to Lewistown.
Medora, like Fedora! Not Moderna.
The next morning I was a bit obsessed with the idea of getting coffee. I got on highway 200 and headed west, and sent my mom on ahead, evidently too far up the highway. I knew we were meant to turn toward Beulah, ND. My maps are pretty complicated to get used to. It’s not one map that covers the entire leg of my journey, but a bunch of smaller maps that constantly change orientation. There are way markers that measure mileage and letters to mark when there are turns, but it can be difficult to find where you are if you don’t study it, especially if you don’t start and end at the same waymarker. I kind of sent my mom out into the wilderness. I had her take a picture of the maps for that day, but that was all. I thought I’d meet with my mom right before the turn. As it turned out, that’s where some heavy duty road work started. My mom was on the other end of the mess when I texted her hinting we should meet at the coffee shop. She didn’t want to come back through it. I was pretty sure I was going to get a coffee either way, even if I just took a detour and biked there… Then I realized my mistake and I had to apologize and ask her to come back. We met at the coffee shop. I got there first and awkwardly waited in the parking lot for about ten minutes. It was more of a coffee hut than a shop. Drive-thru only, and businesses don’t generally take kindly to bicycles in their drive-thrus. There were a lot of cars and it was a long wait.
It was a push to get to our planned endpoint. There were consistent hills snaking between buttes. I made one more turn before Glen Ullin. I got a second wind though, when I reached to the end of the road, turned and saw fields and fields of sunflowers as far as I could see with buttes hovering on the horizon line. Not long after I met up with my mom and we checked out the campground. It was basically a park. There wasn’t a whole lot of shade, no showers, just a vault toilet. It’s been a gradual process, easing my mom into living on the road as I had over the past few months. My mom’s the type of person who can’t deal if she doesn’t get a shower every day. She’d chosen to skip a shower at our campground that morning which proved to be a mistake. So we decided to take advantage of the car at our disposal. We drove to Dickenson to check out the campground situation there. The one in Glen Ullin was inexpensive. The ones in Dickenson were overflowing with RVs and cost nearly as much as a hotel. We caved and got a cheap hotel instead.
Next morning we went back to Glen Ullin and I biked toward Dickenson. We met up in Hebron and I tried huckleberry soda for the first time at a cute little coffee shop called Dark Side of the Brew. If a town has a population of more than 500 people, they usually have a coffee shop. This had been especially true for North Dakota and would continue to be true in Montana down the road. There were a few museums I wanted to check out in Dickenson before they closed at 5pm. I never enjoy feeling like I’m on a time crunch. It’s always tough to judge how difficult the road is going to be up ahead. Sometimes there’s unexpected detours or flat tires. I didn’t want to get to town just before the museums closed and not get to experience them. So my mom and I decided to take a lunch break and come back later to finish out my ride. There was a museum center with a dinosaur museum, my primary interest, and a museum on local history and culture. Some highlights (beyond dinosaurs), included their mineral collection, including florescent rocks that lit up like a psychedelic poster under blacklights, a collection of women’s hats and displays on North Dakota through the decades complete with outfits. I completed my ride for the day, made my mileage goal and had tacos for dinner. I had officially finished yet another map, and therefore another leg of my journey.
Back in Bismarck I got my bike tuned up with hopes that they’d be able to replace my chainring. Back in Peducah I was adviced to get the ring replaced before I within the next 2000 miles. I was definitely past 2000 miles in Bismarck. They didn’t have the part, so they told me to swing by the bike shop in Medora, that even if they didn’t have the part they might be able to figure out a solution for me. Lance at Larson’s Cyclery knew Lorne at Dakota Cyclery personally and told me I could trust him to come up with a solution.
We got there shortly after the bike shop opened. Medora is just outside of Teddy Roosevelt National Park and it has the old west kitsch vibe that towns outside of Yellowstone have. We spent the morning window shopping in souvenir stores. I really wanted a shirt that said “Ain’t She a Butte” I had no luck. I did, however, fall in love. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning, you know about my travel mascot, Sea (named for Meriwether Lewis’s dog, Seaman). My prairie dog obsession is also well established. Well, one shop had large prairie dog stuffed animals that were so flipping soft. I generally try to curb my gut reactions when shopping by leaving the store. If I forget about the item then I wasn’t meant to have it, but I saw this little guy that morning and came back in the afternoon, my need not diminished. So, I adopted Pomp, or Jean-Baptiste “Pompey” Charbonneau, named after Sacagawea’s son. His belly is just so darn cute. I’ve been away from my pet chinchilla, Pip for so long and I miss her belly something awful. This was softening the homesickness for my baby.
We grabbed lunch at a saloon and snagged tickets to a Teddy Roosevelt show a woman at our first campground said everyone would interrogate us about. “Have you seen the play?” We saw the play. No one asked us. I brought Pomp with me to see the show. It was a blast. They seem to put on the show almost every afternoon, a one man show by a Theodore Roosevelt impersonator. It was a charming show. The man is an absolute wealth of knowledge. There was music in the town square after we planned to see, and just when I got out of the theatre I got a call that my bike was ready.
My mom and I decided to go to the park before the sun set. We had been there before on the road trip that inspired my obsession, and I knew it was abundant with prairie dog towns. We spent some time at the first town, but there was a group of children that kept on chasing the poor babies. We moved down to another prairie dog town. As we sat there on a bench, watching my joy, the prairie dogs, a car pulled up. A man with an impressive camera came to take pictures of animals with his son. Unlike the first group of children, this kid was a delight. He was smart and was a junior ranger at what looked like every single national park that ever was. He had a number of the badges pinned to his shirt. I think he’s going to be a ranger someday. We talked about prairie dogs—our mutual favorite animal. I told him about my chinchilla and may have accidentally set him on a life journey to get one for himself. I also let him know about my bike trip, and he thought I was messing with him. I told him how far I’d biked so far and his reaction was perfect. They headed out, and soon after we got back into the car. We were hoping we’d see a buffalo. They said they’d seen a few up the road. Well, we saw one, just walking down the road toward us. I love National Parks. Someone will see something and stop, a signal to the person behind them that there’s something worth seeing. It means everyone’s less likely to miss something exciting. At 9 o’clock we went to a talk about jobs with the NPS. I’ll tell you, I was expecting that a talk at 9pm would be more for the adults, but the audience was full of kids. I felt like an oversized child myself. I’ve thought about applying for jobs with the parks. I think I’d make a pretty good interpreter.
Monday was my day off, though it felt like I’d already taken one, since I’d finished biking so early the day before. My mom and I went on a road trip to the Northern Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. My mom and I had both been to the Southern Unit before. I new the northern unit had interesting rock formations called concretions and I wanted to see what it was about. We saw some buffalo, drove to the end of the park and headed back to camp. First we grabbed lunch. I tried chokecherry jam for the first time. It was maddeningly hot. We returned to the southern unit and spent the afternoon in a picnic shelter where I wrote my next round of postcards.
Goodbye for now, Missouri (River)
When I first asked my mom to meet me and be my support vehicle, I asked her about Great Falls, Montana. I guessed I’d be there in the middle of the first week of August. My mom seems to have spent a lot of time plotting how she could come sooner than later. Her preparation happened behind the scenes. I’m not entirely sure how that plot developed, but just as suddenly as my dad, my mom said “I’m headed to North Dakota on Wednesday.” There was a week or so when a friend talked about tagging along and getting a ride to Ohio to see her family for a memorial service, but the dates were unsure. My mom said she’d depart Massachusetts sometime in late July but we were playing a waiting game to find out of she’d have company. I anticipated about a week between leaving Boston and arriving in Montana. We figured out at some point that my mom would basically be driving on the same highway I’d be biking on from Bismarck to Great Falls, so we could meet up sooner than planned that way. Then our family friend, Jean reached out to my mom and told her they needed to meet up ASAP. Suddenly my mom had a friend to book it across the country with. My mom and I were both concerned about her driving so far alone and I was excited that she had someone to keep her awake in the car.
She left on Wednesday, dropped Jean off in Minneapolis to fly back to Massachusetts on Saturday morning, and was in Bismarck in time for a late dinner. I’d been alone for just over twelve hours, just enough time for me to catch up on my blogs. I decided that while I’d been stopped for two days now, my mom needed a day off of driving before I forced her back onto the road. Besides, my dad and I attempted to see the North Dakota Heritage Museum and had about 15 minutes before it closed. So on Sunday I went back with my mom. The place was huge. It had a section on natural history, Native American history, an exhibit on North Dakota clothing, technology, farming and culture. I think we managed to see every inch.
TW: Suicide
I decided I needed a paper book to read at campgrounds at night, since when I started biking as early as I could, I usually had most of the afternoon to relax before bed. I bought a biography on Sacagawea and a book called “Halfbreed” about a woman’s experiences being both native and white. It’s a dynamic I particularly want to do justice to in my novel as there are a handful of men on the expedition who were both Native American and French Canadian. I’ve read a lot and listened to a lot of podcasts about the struggles facing modern Native Americans. Invisibility and lack of representation seems to be the biggest factors. Feeling unseen, particularly because of your ancestral whiteness, or white people going through the world naively thinking your people have been killed off just because they can’t physically see your heritage in your skin color has had a profound effect on indigenous people’s mental health and suicide rates among teens is so high it’s heart breaking. I can see why. If I lived in a world where people valued my existence so little that they presumed I was dead, it would be easy to fall into the thought pattern that the world won’t notice if I’m gone, that my death wouldn’t impact anyone.
That got dark, but it’s a primary reason I think writing a novel on the Lewis and Clark Expedition is necessary. It’s something we need to talk about. We need to stop viewing Native Americans in the past tense, and these men, George Drouillard, Pierre Cruzatte, Francois Labiche as well as several other French boatmen who didn’t follow all the way to the Pacific, were all both French Canadian and Native American. I can’t tell you the number of historians who write off their native heritage and call them white men.
As I looked at my maps more closely in Bismarck and read their commentary, I had an unfortunate realization. I was breaking away from the Missouri River. Due to increased truck traffic at the oil refineries on 1804, (the highway I’d been following since South Dakota) and a complete lack of shoulders, the Adventure Cycling Association rerouted the bike trail. 1804 and 1806 had been the official auto tour on either side of the river through both South and North Dakota, but after Bismarck the Missouri went north and I went west. First though, I biked up to Fort Mandan in Washburn. I was so excited to be there and their visitor center did not disappoint. This was the first visitor center that actually had an interpreter and a tour! My mom went on ahead and texted me that there was one starting at the hour. I got there just in time. The visitor center is just down the road from the state park where there’s a reproduction of the fort the Expedition built in the winter of 1804-1805. I got a close up look every room in the fort. I even got to try on a reproduction of Meriwether Lewis’s uniform coat. I chatted with the interpreter for a bit about my trip and my book, and she told me if I stuck around she might be able to get me in to see Patrick Gass’s (the carpenter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition) journal from the expedition. So we stuck around. At first I browsed the gift shop, because I need to know what books they have that I haven’t seen before. When I checked out, I mentioned my bike trip and Shannon, the woman at the register, recognized me from Instagram! That was the first time that has happened to me. I think it’s safe to say most of my followers are friends or friends of friends, but she said she followed me.
We talked for a very long time about Lewis and Clark. She has a Master’s in public history and specialized in Early American History. She seems to be a wealth of knowledge on Lewis and Clark. Of course I found her on Instagram and followed her. She had recently done a bit of a Lewis and Clark road trip to research a paper for We Proceed On, the Lewis and Clark magazine I’d recently become obsessed with (some of this was gleaned from a conversation with her coworker). I saw on her Instagram that she was in Saint Louis the same day I arrived there.
I did get in to see Patrick Gas’s journal, and shortly after, my mom and I headed to the Knife River Village visitor center, not too far away. It contained a small museum about the Mandan people and a reproduction of an earth lodge. I had seen one back in Nebraska City, but this one felt much more lived in and real. This was the point at which the trail diverted from the Missouri. I found a campground close to it though, in Pick City, close to the water. I wasn’t ready to stay away quite yet.
P.S.
Two notes:
Firstly, I am about two days away from the Continental Divide right now. From tomorrow until quite possibly next Sunday, I won’t have much phone service or internet, as I’ll be in the mountains. That means I’ll either skip Thursday’s blog or post it late.
Second, I neglected to mention about my time with my Dad in South Dakota and North Dakota. First, The day I met up with my dad as I was rushing to Chamberlain, SD I ran into the only other person I’ve seen biking the Lewis and Clark Trail in the nearly 3k miles I’ve biked. He is still the only person I’ve seen to this day. He was biking west to east and had his wife riding along as a support vehicle.
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 18th 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.
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.
Livestream Q&A from Great Falls
For those interested in tonight’s livestream Q&A It will be on Zoom and Youtube at 7pm Eastern.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82194800616?pwd=NVRHQ3F6eXkxK1F1amVlek5jOFkzZz09
Meeting ID: 821 9480 0616
Passcode: 226165
It will also be streaming on Youtube!
https://youtu.be/7KuntBG0rA4
Feel free to spread the word and pass the link around.
See you soon!
Meghan
Suddenly Supported
On Monday, after that awful 83 mile day I talked to my dad on the phone. He had asked me about a week before if there was any part of my trip that I felt like I could use a support vehicle on. When he first asked I’d mentioned the stretch before Pierre, SD. I had two route options and it seemed like either way I went it would be an incredibly long stretch with nowhere to stop. I shrugged it off, since throwing together a trip to South Dakota in a week seemed like too much to ask for. But he asked me again if I’d given it thought and I repeated my answer. I’d asked my mom to meet me in Great Falls, MT to support me through the mountains, and by some witchcraft she’d finagled her schedule so she could meet up with me in Bismarck. That was only a week away. So, if my dad was going to be a support vehicle, it was this week or nothing. After the day I’d just had, a support vehicle would be a godsend. My dad swept in. On Thursday he hopped on a plane to Denver (the rental car shortage continues. That’s the place he managed to get a reservation). On Friday he drove eight hours to meet me in Chamberlain, SD.
Now, back to Burke, SD. I got my Margarita and headed to the campground from a different direction. It felt ominous, biking down a dirt road, a horse in a nearby paddock reared up and whinnied frantically. I told her she was okay, everything was okay, and continued down the road, singing to myself as I went as I often did to pass the time. I got to the campground at Burke Lake and found it completely empty. No cars, no tents, no people. I shrugged it off. Empty could be creepy, but I’d survived worse. I grabbed an envelope and sat at a picnic bench, ready to pay for my campsite. As I sat there a man in a truck with an empty horse trailer in back came. For a moment I thought it was an RV and the place was about to get less creepy. I was wrong though. He came into the campground, slowed to a crawl and stared at me. He did a loop around the campground like he was scoping it and me out and then disappeared. Whether logical or an overreaction, I now felt like this was going to be the place I got murdered.
I called my mom, and my best friend, Emily, told them what happened and they agreed that I should probably find somewhere that felt safer to stay, so with much irritation I got back on my bike and headed into town again. I called the local motel, which had vacancies and was blessedly inexpensive. As I was heading to my room, a car pulled up and three women emerged. They recognized me. They passed me on the highway earlier that day. They were on their own adventure, exploring South Dakota to try to find their great grandparents’ headstones. They were going from cemetery to cemetery to try to fill in the blank spots in their family history. We talked in the parking lot for quite a while. I told them about my own journey, about the creepy experience I’d just had at the campground. I gave the youngest of the three women, the daughter, my Instagram handle and we parted ways. When I called my mom from the hotel room she told me her first thought when I called from the campground was, by a lake is a convenient place to dump the body.”
I woke up the next morning to find my rear tire completely flat (Again? Yes, Again). I pumped it full of air since I hadn’t experienced a sudden flat. It seemed to be a slow leak, and I forgot about it for the rest of the day. After Burke it felt like I was just getting the miles behind me until I had my dad with me as a support vehicle. South Dakota had been mostly scenery for me. I’d stop to take pictures of the prairies and hillsides and keep heading down the road. There really was nowhere to stop but in the grass beside the shoulder. As I approached the river again, I coasted down an especially long stretch of hillside, counting my blessings that my brakes worked. This was often the case as I got closer to the river. It sat at the bottom of a valley and while at night I coasted down to it to stay at a lakeside campground, it meant the next morning started with a steep climb. This hill led me to Snake Creek. As I pulled into the campground, I could feel my rear tire skidding and suddenly recalled the morning’s flat. I had made it through the entire day riding on it before it gave out. I broke out my tools and patched it, kept my gear off it for a few hours to see if it’d go flat again. As I went to set up my tent I was startled by a frog the same color as the dry grass around me. The same frog continued to startle me every time I crossed that way. I went down to the boat launch to have dinner at the snack shack, and when I got back the tire was completely flat again. I called it. I replaced the tube and it gave me no more trouble. I was dreading the climb that would start the next morning. I even told my neighbor, who asked me about my trip as I was leaving, that I had the feeling I’d be walking up the hill. Once I got going though, I went up it like a gosh darn champ! I don’t even think I stopped to breathe. Perhaps it was the knowledge that by that afternoon I’d have support. My dad would carry my bags in his rental car and I wouldn’t have to worry about further damaging my bike. I got to Chamberlain fairly early in the afternoon and not long after, my dad met up with me.
I took a long break. We had a late lunch together. We went to see the Dignity statue that everyone mistakes for Sacagawea. The sculpture is of a Sioux woman. Not every depiction of a Native American woman is Sacagawea. This was the second surreal instance on this journey that I saw something familiar. I saw this sculpture by chance on the cross-country trip that inspired this adventure. The visitor center wasn’t open when my mom and I came this way, so I got to explore it for the first time with my dad. After that we went to the Akta Lakota Museum. Native American learning experiences had been rare so far. Often centers that I wanted to visit were too far out of the way to justify on a bike. I was thrilled to have access to a car so I could cram more learning and sight-seeing into my trip.
We ended the day in Fort Thompson, just one long stretch before Pierre, SD. My dad has opinions about the type of campgrounds he preferred. He didn’t want to be crammed in amongst RVs. After Snake Creek and the Fort Randall campgrounds I was fairly confident in state and federally run sites. That night we stayed at Left Tailrace Campground, run by the Army Corps of Engineers. I wasn’t disappointed. It had been a warm day, but the prairie winds off Lake Sharpe made it downright comfortable. We went for a walk to watch the water, and when we got back to our campsite, we started a fire. Our neighbor offered us use of camping chairs and hot dogs to roast. He was on the last day of a trip to every National Park in the U.S.
There were two routes I could have taken from Fort Thompson. One was exceptionally hilly but went through National Grassland, the other was much flatter. I chose the one through grasslands. I told my dad that morning that I hoped to see prairie dogs soon as we were halfway through the state and I still hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to tell me if he saw them. I decided not to ask. I wanted to experience the magic of stumbling upon them myself. I didn’t have much in the way of cell service anyhow. I left my panniers in my dad’s rental car. Without them I felt like a superhero. As my dad drove away to our first meet-up location, ten miles down the road, my GPS spun wildly. I wasn’t sure what direction I should go in. I biked back and forth from the exit of the recreation area to a roadworker at the start of the dam and back three or four times before I finally committed and turned left. Thankfully the sense was knocked back into my GPS and I biked up the giant hill and away from the lake, down route 1806. I coasted down a long hill toward Lower Brulle, SD. For a moment I thought I saw a bunny running across a field, but it wasn’t hopping the way a bunny would. Then I saw the mounds. PRAIRIE DOGS!!
I pulled over and called my dad. He had never been to South Dakota before. It is well known that prairie dog towns are my happy place. I asked him if he wanted to come back and see a prairie dog, that I was going to be here a while. I could hear them squeaking, but the moment they realized I was paying attention to them they scurried back into their homes. I spent a good thirty minutes or more there, basking in the sounds of the prairie dogs. My dad and I parted ways for the next meet-up. Not long after I got a call from my dad who was down the road on the other side of town. The road was closed up ahead and the only alternative routes would either involve the interstate or add about thirty miles to an already exceptionally long day. I pedaled through town, grateful to have an alternative. In the moment I wasn’t sure how I’d have dealt with the situation without my dad. I probably would have had to stay in Lower Brulle after a very short ride and then cram the detour into the next day. It wasn’t until much later that I remembered I’d planned on the flatter route before I knew my dad was coming. When he came I decided on the more difficult ride because I thought it would be more scenic and more likely to have prairie dogs. Regardless of the detour I was glad I made the choice I did. I saw my beloved prairie dogs!
I continued down 1806 all day. There were prairie dog towns for miles upon miles and I was wildly happy. I felt mostly capable of the ride, powering up hills and sailing down them. My dad and I were working on finding a rhythm. It was an incredibly hot. I met up with my him approximately every 15 miles, but he was enjoying the scenery, the fact that we could see the Missouri down below us, the prairies surrounding us. I passed him a few times or stopped because I saw him pulled over to take pictures. I was nearly done for the day. I was nearing the end of my final stretch and I saw a mammoth hill before me. My dad later said that he laughed out loud when he saw the hill I was about to have to climb. I had his pity. There was a series of a few mad hills, and I was fighting crosswinds and headwinds all day. I had been so pleased with myself that I’d survived all the hills the past few days without getting off my bike, but I had to cave. I wasn’t even carrying gear anymore! I’d bike as far as I could manage, get off my bike and walk until my legs felt up to attempting to pedal again. After the worst of the hills it was a downhill stretch all the way to Fort Pierre. It was such a long downhill stretch I was nervous that I’d overshot the turn and would have to pedal back uphill. Fortunately I hadn’t and finally met up with my dad once again.
What the Heck is a Hose Clamp?
After a day off due to pouring rain, I got back on the road and continued west along the Missouri. By lunchtime I was in Yankton where I crossed over the Gavin’s Point Dam to visit the Army Corps of Engineers Lewis and Clark Visitor Center on the other side, my last stop in Nebraska. A woman at the visitor center back in Sioux City implied that I shouldn’t miss it. I hadn’t planned on stopping there, but I pushed myself. It was a bit of a letdown. At least I learned that Army Corps of Engineers tended to be primarily about dams and wildlife, so I curbed my expectations in the future. I did, however, get my first view of Lewis and Clark Lake and I fell in love. It was gorgeous! I could see golden bluffs topped with lush, green trees. I biked down the entire length of it, a large portion of which was paved bike paths in the Lewis and Clark Recreation Area. I later told my parents, I could have pitched my tent there and never left. I saw so many people swimming, kayaking, boating, and fishing and felt myself seethe with jealousy. I was so tempted to stop there for the night, and in retrospect I wish I had.
When I reached the other side of the recreation area, I popped back onto a bike path by the highway, and eventually back onto the highway proper. I had two campground options that night, and as I followed the route to the campground I found my route was closed off. They were repaving the road and there was nothing but dirt. So, I sought out an alternative. It went from paved to gravel, and then I saw a sign saying this road was closed and no through traffic. I didn’t seem to have much of an alternative if I wanted to get to a campground that night. I decided to risk it, and to my frustration, this road too was torn up and non-existant. It was nothing but dirt and construction equipment. At this point I decided it was after 6 o’clock at night, no one was here working—I could just walk my bike across this mess to the road on the other side. It was tough going. I did my best to bike the parts that were hard packed by large wheels, but I got to the point where I could hardly control my bike and I got off. With my gear attached to the back of my bike I felt like I was practically carrying it along. The wheels were of no use. I was persistent though and made it to the other end. I turned left down a gravel road, toward the first campground. It was getting late, but when I got to the first campground, I assessed it, a vault toilet, very few campsites and none of them occupied, and a family just now putting their boat in the water after 7pm. They wouldn’t come back in til late and I was sure they’d wake me up when they did. I’d already biked nearly seventy miles that day. So, despite being exhausted, I pushed on. The next campground would likely feel a bit more welcoming, since at least it was next to a town.
I got moving again and followed more dirt roads to what Google told me was the entrance to the Springfield Recreation Area. It certainly looked like there was a park nearby, but the “entrance” was private property. As I was trying to figure out what to do next, an unleashed dog set his sights on me and I had to get off my bike and yell at him until he stood down (he remained on guard until I got up over the hill and out of sight. I was frustrated. I didn’t feel like I could investigate further because this darn dog kept trying to chase me down every time I stopped paying attention to it. My only option seemed to be to press on further into town. It looked like there might be an entrance there, but if there wasn’t, at least the town had a motel. I arbitrarily plugged in a gas station as a destination. When I got to my turn I could have laughed or cried. The road was closed again. I thought for a second I might walk my bike through the closure like I had before, but when I started down the road I saw it dropped off suddenly, 15 feet down into a creek. The road was closed because not only was it gone, but so was a bridge! So once again I needed to find an alternate route. I made it back to the highway at this point and followed Google’s directions (so far it had been my Adventure Cycling Association map that failed me). It told me to turn left…into a state prison. Not by one, but down a road directly into a gate topped in barbed wire. I followed the roads around the perimeter, extremely uncomfortable that I could see prisoners out in the yard as I passed by. I think I went by unnoticed. Finally, I made my way into Springfield, SD, and had a long, hard debate. As I came into town I saw the sign for the recreation area I’d been trying to get to…but there was a motel right there! I talked myself into sticking with the campground. It was nice, there were cute little cabins, and in addition to vault toilets, they did have showers and electric boxes. I’d biked 83 miles, the most I’d ever done in a day, and on hills, yet somehow I wasn’t unconscious the moment I stopped. I called my parents, set up my tent, made dinner, enjoyed the sight of fireflies all around me. I was happy to go to bed.
I had now been in South Dakota for a few days and still hadn’t seen a prairie dog. At Yankton Reservation I saw my first buffalo, a large heard of them fenced in. It’s pretty easy to mistake cows and buffalo when you’re looking for the later, but I got confirmation as I passed fences with warning signs about buffalo safety. I ended my day in Pickstown. It was a Monday and the only restaurant in town was sadly closed. The Army Corps of Engineers Visitor Center at the Fort Randall Dam was on the way to my campground, another State Recreation Area, so I stopped by and learned about the Sioux (Did you know Lakota means friend, and Sioux means enemy, so when you say Lakota Sioux you’re saying “friend-enemy”? There was a small section on Lewis and Clark and another on prairie dogs. I asked the ranger there when I’d start seeing them. She said her father’s a farmer and they’re all over these parts, they just don’t tent to stay near busy roads. I wanted to see a prairie dog town so badly!
Once again I stayed in a state recreation area, once again it was gorgeous and rather luxurious, with a shower, picnic shelters and a waterside view. I was ready to specifically seek them out. I got there early enough in the day to spend some time reading before bed. It was a nice change of pace. The down side to all of these dams was that the campgrounds were beneath them. That meant every morning waking up and immediately biking uphill, but it was gradual, and I managed it fine, but that particular dam was at the bottom of two enormous hills which formed an enormous wind tunnel. I had headwinds and crosswinds the entire way uphill which made it slow going, plus it was drizzling. I gave myself a few necessary breaks on it, sat in the grass and wrote descriptions of the scenery in my journal.
I saw my first sign for Wall Drug. I wasn’t on the interstate, so I only saw a few in total. After my experience with Raccoons back in Fort Massac, I went grocery shopping and replaced my peanut butter packets with a small jar of Nutella. I was so sick of Nutella. My lunches had been a flour tortilla with Nutella and it was too sweet to stomach repeatedly. I always wanted something savory. So, there was a town nearby, Fairfield, SD that was meant to have a café. I took a detour to grab lunch there, only to find it had closed down. I fought strong winds to get there, biked up and down hilly gravel roads and when I did it get there started raining again. (Sidenote: What are you supposed to do when you see a calf has escaped its pen and you don’t know who it belongs to or how to get in contact with anyone who lives nearby?)
I was thrilled when I passed through Bonesteel and found a restaurant that isn’t listed on Google Maps. I got a burger that was way too much food. My server disappeared and I stayed in Bonesteel way longer than I wanted to. I planned to stop at Burke Lake State Recreation Area, since I’d had so much luck with recreations in South Dakota. I finally got to pay and hopped back on the highway. As I biked, I kept on feeling a drag. I’d stop to see if my fenders were rubbing, since that seemed to be the answer to that question, but they looked fine. I heard it though, something rubbing and I felt my pace slow quite a bit. Finally I took off my bags to problem solve. Then I saw it. The arms of my rack were bowed out like they couldn’t take the weight of my gear. I looked closer, the collar where the rack bolts screwed into my bike were snapped off completely. I heaved a sigh and started macgyvering a solution with zip ties. It took forever, but as I was finishing up, a biker dude pulled over and asked if I needed help. I’d done my best to make it work and asked him if he’d hold my bike while I loaded my gear back on. I wanted to see if it would hold. He happened to have heavier duty zip ties than I did, so he gave me a few and held the bike up while I put them to use. He was also planning on staying in Burke that night. We parted ways and I continued up the highway towards my intended campground. Maybe twenty minutes later, the man came back and gave me a handful of heavy duty zip ties and two hose clamps. It was such a kind thing to do. It was a sturdier solution and would make me feel much more secure. He said the hardware store closed at 6 and he wanted to be sure I got what I needed. I thanked him repeatedly and once again we parted ways.
Google Maps had me go down a gravel road that was meant to end in the recreation area I planned to stay at. It wound up ending in some family farm, so I went back the way I came and decided I was going to eat at a restaurant for dinner because evidently that’s what I do when I have a rough day. I got mozzarella sticks and a frozen strawberry margarita. Someone asked me about my bike trip and talked to me a good while about it. I told him about my bike troubles His daughter later gave me her number and told me if I needed help in Pierre to let her know. Finally, I headed for my campground.
Entering My 11th State
Next to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, connected by a paved bike path was the Charles Floyd Riverboat Museum. Riverboat Museums seem to be a thing on our country’s major rivers. There was a Riverboat Museum in Marietta OH, then in Brownsville, NE there was a boat called the Meriwether Lewis Dredge. A dredge clears out deposits on the bottom of the river to make the river more navigable. This dredge was normally a museum, but was undergoing renovation as it had been badly damaged during, you guessed it! The flood of 2019.
The Charles Floyd Riverboat Museum was free admission. It had a small section on Charles Floyd. Someone had done a forensic reproduction of him based on a casting of his skull. I noticed that the forensic artist looked an awful lot like the wax bust he created of Charles Floyd. There were sections on the Native American tribes in the area, dioramas of riverboats on the Missouri, a diorama of Charles Floyd’s funeral. They had a dugout canoe, and then upstairs you could go to the pilot’s station and get a view of the water. You could even ring a bell!
I was thrilled when I got to the gift shop and found a huge collection of postcards for sale from Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota. I was almost done with the former two states and hadn’t found a single one. I bought a bunch, figuring I’d send out postcards from Pierre or Bismarck.
It was a hot, muggy afternoon and I hadn’t even gotten out of Sioux City, so I hopped on the bike path and headed for Vermillion. I don’t actually know when I crossed the border. There wasn’t a sign. But, I reached Jefferson, which I knew to be in South Dakota. My 11th state! I stopped for lunch in Elk Point. There had been a few hills on the border but then it was blessedly flat until I reached Vermillion.
My schedule had been set askew by so many days in Omaha/Council Bluffs. I usually took a day off on the weekend, biked for six days and continued the cycle. I try to stay at campgrounds on my cycling days and hotels on my day off, so I can have wifi. That attempt hasn’t been particularly successful of late. Since I didn’t get on the road again until Wednesday though, it was already weekend again, and in this part of the country, campgrounds fill up on the weekends and it’s difficult to find a site. It’s one reason I was at a hotel in Sioux City on Friday night. Well, tonight, yet again it was supposed to pour. South Dakota was in the middle of a drought and I brought the rain with me all the way from Missouri.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, but since getting caught in flooding, I’ve been skittish about staying at campgrounds in the rain. Not only was it supposed to pour that night, but it was supposed to pour all day the next day, and I was done with riding in the rain. That, coupled with the bike drama in Omaha, and the fact that it looked like Pierre would be my next opportunity to take a day off and that was a week away (that’s 10 days straight of biking with devastatingly low morale, including a ride in the pouring rain) I decided it made sense to take a day off in Vermillion and catch up on my blog.
My motel room was on the second floor. Once again it was tough to find a place online. I wound up only able to book one night. It said it was the last room available and that it wasn’t available the next night. I got the room anyway, figuring I’d troubleshoot the next night when I got there. Well, I got there and the staff told me it was no problem to add another night, that I just needed to check out and check back in in the morning. It poured that evening, as expected, but there was a lull the next morning before it began. I got up as early as I could given how dark my hotel room was, secured my room for that night, and biked to Spirit Mound, a mound north of Vermillion that the plains tribes said was the home of dangerous spirits. Lewis and Clark brought a party to investigate the mound in August 1804.
The historical markers here endeared Meriwether Lewis’s dog to me further than ever. Poor Sea got overheated in the sweltering August temperatures and Lewis had to send someone back to the keelboat with him. I went on a Sea information bender, texting with my mom who wanted to know how old Sea was when he died. He was 4 or 5, and according to reliable sources when Meriwether Lewis ended his own life, Sea withered away. He wouldn’t leave his master’s body and refused food and water until he died. Don’t be surprised if I wind up with a Newfoundland after reading that. I also learned that Clark bought Seaman a collar when they returned that said “The greatest traveler of my species. The name is SEAMAN, the dog of captain Meriwether Lewis whom I accompanied to the Pacifick ocean through the interior of the continent of North America.” I melted at how sweet and human that was. Clark bought a present for his best friend’s dog!
I got breakfast at a little cafe on Main Street called Café Bruleé. Country Fried Chicken on a rainy day may just be the best decision you can possibly make. Honestly, I thought it was going to be a coffee shop, but I needed to eat and it was the right choice. Afterwards I went to The Bean Community, just down the block, and continued work on my blog and instagram with a lavender latte in hand.
The Stars On the Horizon 