August 13: Beach, North Dakota

     There was plenty of beauty and isolation on a section of a county road between Glendive and Wibaux.  I encountered one car in twelve miles.  It was so sparsely travelled that I started getting cocky and I biked down the center of the road, sometimes with no hands and sometimes throwing almonds into my mouth with no hands on the handlebars.  I didn't even mind the stretches of Interstate 94 riding that I had to endure.  With a ten-foot wide shoulder, even heavy traffic does not concern me.
     More headwinds!  Okay, that's enough whining.  I am in a new state and I am rejuvenated.  But there is a problem brewing and it is showing its ugly head just one mile into the state.  After 1300 miles of being able to buy good beer in any gas station or grocery store, I am finding that North Dakota's alcohol laws are as archaic as Minnesota's.  I hope Golden Valley County is not representative of the rest of the state.  I don't want the inconvenience of having to go look for a place to buy beer.

     My next two days are going to be easy ones.  I will be bicycling less than twenty miles each of those days in order to enjoy and hike around in the badlands of the Teddy Roosevelt National Park and Little Missouri National Grasslands area.  It may be the last interesting and unusual (to me anyway) landscape I'll be seeing.
     Plus, it will be nice to get back to sleeping outdoors.  I've stayed in cheap motels five nights in a row now because camping opportunities have been either non-existent, for RV's only, or just plain undesirable.