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. WeContinue reading “The Ride to Bismarck”
Tag Archives: bicycle touring
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 upContinue reading “A Wrong Turn”
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 dredgeContinue reading “Entering My 11th State”
Interpretive Plural.
It’s not too far from Council Bluffs to Sioux City. My first day back on the road after so much rough travel, I got to Onawa. It was a long stretch of wonderful flatness, more what I’d been promised in the plains states than what I’d gotten. Seriously, glacial hills in Kansas? Loess Hills inContinue reading “Interpretive Plural.”
All Time Low
I crossed the river and set foot in Iowa for the first time, enjoying the slight change in scenery, very lush green bluffs, occasionally with a chunk missing that revealed a shock of red soil. There were technically towns on this ride, but the first few I passed through had been ravaged by a tornadoContinue reading “All Time Low”
Risking the Steamboat Trace
I decided to risk the Steamboat Trace, despite knowing that it had been closed two years before due to the 2019 flood (a flood that’s name was invoked in every part of the trail since I reached the Mississippi). If an ATV could make it down it, as I was told, then I surely couldContinue reading “Risking the Steamboat Trace”
Solo in Saint Louis
If I haven’t mentioned before, I bought a tracking device called Tracki solely to put my parents minds at ease, so they could know where I was when I didn’t have cell service to text them. While biking I realized pretty quickly that the device didn’t work as I intended. First of all it usedContinue reading “Solo in Saint Louis”
Raccoons and Ramparts
I spent the next day cruising south on much flatter roads, all the way to Fort Massac. It was Sunday, so the bike shop in Paducah was closed until Monday morning. I knew I wanted to hit fort Massac, and if I stayed in Paducah I’d have to back track to get to the bike shopContinue reading “Raccoons and Ramparts”
Those Aren’t Foothills…
I got to a late start on Sunday morning, after a long night of preparing for the road. I downloaded my maps into my GPS, since this would be my last time in front of my computer for four months, wrote a few e-mails to my contacts at the NPS, and didn’t go to bedContinue reading “Those Aren’t Foothills…”
The Stars On the Horizon 