August 15: Lake Patterson Recreation Area

     My plans changed a little this morning.  I was going to spend a night in Theodore Roosevelt National Park for another badlands experience but it just didn't seem right to go only nine miles when I had another day of light winds from the south.  As the farmers around here will tell you, "you've got to make hay while the sun shines."  So I rode on.

     Medora is the gateway to Teddy Roosevelt's Park.  It is quite the tourist town.  For a town with a year-round population of 112 people, it sure has a lot of businesses, especially restaurants and gift shops.  It's all done up in kind of a faux old west style.  I guess it had some charm to it due mostly to the backdrop of high cliffs along the Little Missouri River.

     A combination of I-94 and "Old Highway 10" was my route today.  Old Highway 10 was freshly paved and rather pleasant in that regard, but what did I do to deserve the grasshopper plague a few miles past Belfield?  I think I recall what the pharaoh did, but I sure never held any people captive.  The grasshoppers were hopping around everywhere, often landing on and sticking to me.  It gave me the creeps.  A few times some of the unfortunate insects went under my tire or through my spokes.  The crunching and slicing sounds gave me same twisted satisfaction I got as a grade-schooler in Iowa when my brothers and I would dice up big June bugs with tennis rackets.

     I turned a nine-mile day into a 40-mile day and I camped a few miles west of Dickinson at the Lake Patterson Recreation Area, despite the warning I got from my new friend, Frank.  (You may remember him from the Circle, MT post.)  He encountered loud, drunk oil workers.  I encountered a neighbor at the site next to mine, shirtless and with a huge beer belly, belching and slurring his words and swearing at his wife.  Don't worry though, she could keep up with him F-word for F-word.

     I struck up a short conversation with beer belly late in the afternoon.  I couldn't help but notice he had a big jug of Black Velvet Canadian Whiskey and he kept pouring some of that into a 1/2 pint bottle of Black Velvet from which he took healty swigs.  I wondered, "why not just use a cup?  Or chug from the big bottle?

     Nice lake though.

     (Addendum:  After I finished writing for the day, some of the young, loud oil workers joined beer belly for some drinking and swearing.  AC/DC blared from a Chevy Blazer.  It made it hard for me to enjoy my beer in peace.)