So it was a good day for us.
North Dakota riding is all about wind. It's never flat here, but it's never mountainous. The highest point in the state is just 3000' plus, and that's at the western edge. Otherwise we have seen lovely rolling hills and occasional buttes & cliffs, nothing that stops wind. We have been watching the weather forecasts for wind direction and speed almost as closely as we watch for thunderstorms. Although everyone we ask assures us that the prevailing winds are from the north & west, so far we have only seen south and east. Yesterday it
took us over 7 hours of riding time to cover 78 miles, and there was not a lot of climbing.
Today, the forecast was for modest SE winds becoming calm at some unspecified time. There was also a 30% chance of possibly severe thunderstorms, and an expected high of close to 90. We encountered some headwinds before lunch, but they really did fade. For the first time, we rode through a wind farm without seeing any movement. That made the day so much easier!
But, as Arlo Guthrie said, that's not what I came to tell you.
I came to confess that, for the first time on the trip, I did not ride every mile to our destination.
We passed through a few miles of highway construction; the flagman just waved us through, so we shared the very dusty road with all the trucks & tractors. Gritty? Oh, yeah. I think it'll take about a week to get it all out. Then we had a nice lunch in the park in Wishek. Then, as soon as we left the town, there was a sign: Road Construction Next 10 Miles, and the pavement ended. Oh, well. As I said yesterday, unpaved is no biggie for me. But ten miles?
I needn't have worried. After about two miles, we reached a flag lady who did not wave us through. She looked at us; she asked where we were headed; she said she had a detour for us, but it would cost us 30 miles. To think, we'd been grousing about having chosen a route three miles longer than the alternative. So we had reached a stalemate. Fortunately, Yvonne had one more option: would we consider tossing our bikes in the pilot vehicle and being driven? It might be 1/2 hour until it got back, and it would take 1/2 hour to ride through. How would we feel about that? Very happy! was the answer we both rushed to give her. So we stood in the sun and chatted with our new best buddy until the pilot vehicle...
I had pictured a pick up truck or something. Not a compact car that was clearly the property of its driver, who clearly had not planned to accomodate two bikes, two riders, and all their paraphernalia when she left home this morning. She swallowed her doubts; we rushed to take off the wheels and stuff the frames into her tiny trunk. She agreed to leave her two full-sized spare tires with Yvonne. We shoved some of the debris aside and wedged ourselves and the rest of our panniers & dry bags in - Bruce had two of our wheels in his lap - and off we went. So I am short 5 miles. That's all it turned out to be. Boy, were we glad not to be riding when we saw the road condition & all the huge machinery operating out there.
We could have gone the other way had we known, but we would have missed what we saw shortly after we resumed riding. There was a place where there was, once again, no pavement. This time it was where a lake was lapping at both sides of the road; obviously flooding had washed it out. As we approached, we saw a stop sign. Under the stop sign was another rather school-mistressy sign:
Take Turns!
Bruce took a picture instead; there was no one waiting to take turns.
All in all it was a very nice day, even though the temperature read 92 when we got to Edgely.
Miles today: 68
Total miles so far: 1888
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