Oh, my, oh Minot!

Aline was the first to direct us to the news. Minot, North Dakota, the place we plan to spend a couple of days, to leave our bikes for a mid-ride bike spa session (tune-up & new chains & all that), and fly from for Chris & Amy's wedding in Vermont in a couple of weeks, Minot is suffering from record level floods. The Souris - aka Mouse - River is expected to rise as much as ten feet beyond its current flood level over the next few days. Levees are already giving way; many areas are already under water. 30% of the residents have been evacuated.

We will have to figure out what we need to do. We are scheduled to arrive there in about ten days. Will the hotel be open? If so, will it really have room for us, or will it be bulging at the seams with evacuated residents and insurance adjusters? Will the airport be operating normally? Will the bike shop be open for business? At the moment I don't feel comfortable calling and expecting the people there to drop their sandbags to deal with my really rather unimportant concerns. I think we will just have to wait and see how bad it gets, and get on the phone when things have settled a bit. We are staying at a major chain hotel so can probably call their central number, and a travel agent made our flight reservations. We can certainly call her.

Meanwhile we have a map of the Dakotas and are looking at possible alternate routes just in case. But it seems that much of North Dakota is devastated by floods.

This just happens to be one of the places we were worried about. It is 125 miles from Williston, where we plan to be for the 4th of July. So far we have not been able to find a place to stay between the two. This is not likely to help. 125 miles is quite a bit more than we had hoped to ride (maybe we'd be swimming part way?) in a single day. Amy - not the bride-to-be, my cousin Amy - has gleefully reminded us of her cross country bike trip on which she decided Greyhound was preferable to riding in North Dakota. Now this.

It is almost hard to go back to the regular story, but I do want to remember this day, too. We saw a golden eagle in the first mile this morning. We saw majestic mountain ranges in all directions. We had lunch in a very nice little cafe in a nice little town called Wilsall. Willie picked Bruce up a bit early to get him to the local bike shop in time; I kept riding the last ten miles or so and beat the rain to Livingston by a very few minutes. We are sitting in a very pleasant little suite in the Murray Hotel having had a very good dinner. Thunder and lightning are giving a good show - should be through before morning. Feeling great!

Miles today - 63
Total so far - 1105