August 22: Roy Lake State Park

     I headed straight south out of Lisbon, bound for a new state--South Dakota--because that was what the winds dictated.
     In the last three weeks I have been to some of the world's great capitol cities and financial centers:  Zurich, The Havre, Glasgow, Lisbon and Havana.  I've even been to Harlem, Malta, Nome and the Kremlin.  I never knew they were all in Montana and North Dakota.  You learn a lot about the world on a bike ride.
     I'm happy with my decision to add a small corner of a new state to my itinerary.  The roads were good and Roy Lake State Park is an extremely nice place to camp.  My site is right on the lake, which is a real lake, not a pond or a wetland or a swamp.  It is surprisingly clear and blue and surrounded by trees.  There are a few canoes out there right now and I would like to shout out some advice to the paddlers (but I won't actually do it.)  Here is what I should say:  "Your voice carries a long way on a quiet lake.  You might THINK you are far from shore and nobody will hear your burping and farting and silly jokes, or your intimate conversations, or your trashing somebody you don't like, or your theories on where to find and catch fish.  You would be wrong."

Let's spend a day in a different Dakota.
 

August 21: Lisbon, ND

     A cool front moved in after midnight and the morning was gloriously comfortable.  I made and lingered over a couple of cups of Starbucks French Roast at my campsite.  I didn't want to leave.
     Yet, leave I did and it was my first day off the Adventure Cycling route since Sandpoint, Idaho.  From this point on I will be improvising my route on a daily basis, literally as the wind blows.  The direction of the wind will play a big factor in what direction I will pedal.  Hopefully my plan is successful or I could end up at the point where I will be absolutely REQUIRED to fight terrible headwinds to get home.
     This morning I went south with the wind along the Sheyenne River National Scenic Byway.  I made a short detour to see a State Historic Site, namely, Fort Ransom, an important military site in the 1850's to the 1870's. 
     Did I see a fort?  No, I did not.  What I DID see was an empty field with big white signs indicating where, for example, the captain's quarters, or the enlisted men's barracks, or the stable, or the mess hall once stood.  There wasn't an original log or chunk of wood or stick left.  In the center of all those white signs was a flag pole.  Highly unlikely is the possibility that it was an original artifact.
     Lisbon, population 2,154, was the "North Dakota City of the Year" in 2009.  I probably will never know the reason.  It didn't make much of an impression on me (except for the friendly librarian who allowed me all the time I needed to update my blog.)  I stayed at a dumpy motel in town anyway because I did not feel like riding another 50 miles to the next significant town.  The motel was very inexpensive but it wasn't very clean.

August 20: Little Yellowstone County Park

     All heads turned my way when I walked into the Gackle Cafe at 8:00 a.m.  There were six men sitting at one table and eight men sitting at another.  On the other side of the room were six women at a table.  Nobody was having anything other than coffee and not one of them was under 60 years of age.
     I was greeted with a couple of polite "hellos" and then they all went back to chattering at their respective tables.  I sat alone, ordered coffee and a small breakfast and quietly ate it when it arrived.  Only after I got up to pay did I start getting peppered with questions about my ride.  I also got weather reports, information on road conditions, and wishes for a safe journey.  The owner of the cafe thanked me most emphatically with a firm pat on the back.  I assumed he was overjoyed that somebody actually ordered some food.  When I left that place I was feeling pretty special. 

     If I was not on a bike the last two days and instead was driving, I would speed up and say to myself, "This is excruciating.  Let's get the hell out of this wasteland."
     Then the bicycler part of me would say, "Seriously?  Did you not notice all of rolling hills and those lakes and wetlands?"
     "Those aren't lakes.  Mille Lacs is a lake.  These are more like ponds or, better yet, swamps."
     "They may be swampy but certainly you enjoyed seeing the various ducks and herons and pelicans."
     "The what?"
     "You heard me," bike-me said.
     "Well I might have seen a couple of ducks."
     "I saw a hundred ducks if I saw one.  I had to laugh at this one kind of duck that takes off by running on the water and pounding its wings on the surface like a drummer hitting his snare.  And in that one bay alone there must have been 30 big white pelicans."
     "Oh," said motorist-me.
     Biker-me kept it up.  "Did you see all those hawks?"
     "Oh yeah," motorist-me perked up.  "He was sitting on a telephone pole.  I have to admit, THAT was pretty cool.  I love birds of prey."
     "You saw one hawk and that was pretty cool, huh?  I must have seen at least 20 of them and several screamed out that CHREEEEEEeeeee sound that they make."
     "Well, how do you expect me to hear that with the windows closed, the air-conditioning on, and Spoon blasting on the sound system?" motorist-me replied, feeling kind of hip with the Spoon reference.
     "Not only that," bike-me continued, "one red-tailed hawk played a little game with me.  As I approached his telephone pole perch, he took off and flew to another one three poles ahead.  When I got to that one, he did the same thing.  This process repeated itself four times until he flew across the road and yelled, 'CHREEEEEEeeeeeee.'"
     Unimpressed, motorist-me said, "whatever you saw or did, it took you two days.  I took ME two hours."
     Biker-me had no answer to that.

     It was so quiet on these roads and there was so little traffic that sometimes I felt like I was in a wilderness.  If somehow I was staring at a lone sunflower growing inches from the side of the road and was suddenly shocked by bone-jarring rumble strips (which I did) or if a small mammal bolted in front of me out of nowhere (which it did,) and if I had wiped out as a result, it could easily have been 15 or 20 minutes before my broken, bloody body was found.  I thrive in that kind of solitude.

     This evening I am camped at the Little Yellowstone Park.  The Sheyenne River flows right behind me in a deep valley.  There are no other campers.  Oak trees tower over me and provide shade.  At some point today, the high temperature is expected to be 99 degrees.
     At 8:30 p.m. all of the dragonflies in Barnes County got together in a clearing at the north end of the campground for a dragonfly jamboree.  At 9:00, several owls began hooting.  I laid in the sweat lodge that was my tent.

Little sunflowers at roadside.  Flat land.  Hawks. Rodents.








 

August 19: Gackle, ND

     Hot and humid.  Until I arrived in Gackle, 65 miles from Hazelton, those three words were going to be my entire post for today.  However, I could not let my stay at The Honey Hub of Gackle--A Cyclist's Respite go unmentioned.  Here is what I wrote in their guestbook:

     I've only been here for 1/2 hour and this is already my favorite North Dakota stop.  It's 94 degrees and I have no idea what the humidity is.  Here I am in relatively luxurious conditions and, I might add, quite unexpectedly.  I saw the sign at the intersection, gave Jason a call, and saved myself having to set up camp, God knows where, in this heat. 
     Laundry, shower, air-conditioning, bed, refrigerator, treats, wi-fi, restaurant advice, couch, restroom--THIS IS THE HILTON HOTEL OF MY ADVENTURE!  Thank you, Millers.

     Basically, this family has opened up their basement for cyclists who are weary from the long distances between towns of any size.  Gackle itself only has about 350 people yet it is the biggest town for 110 miles on Highways 34 and 46.

August 18: Hazelton, ND

     Those crazy winds changed a little bit again today, coming from the southwest.  That was a great development for about half of my day.  The other half, for the first time in a week, went in a southerly direction.  That's OK though because I am on the other side of the Missouri River.  If Mandan, as the sign on the edge of town claims, is truly the "gateway to the west," then I am now in the east.  And the east is already noticeably flatter.  Wheat fields are giving way to corn fields.  And the aridity of the west is gone.  As if by magic, today is my first humid day.  According to the news it was at 98% when I left Bismark this morning.
     I am starting to see some vast sunflower fields.  I think Kansas claims to be the "Sunflower State," but North Dakota has to be a close second.  Personally, I would call North Dakota the "Hay Bale State."  Once in a while I like to use a big word, so let me just throw this out there:  In this state, hay bales are ubiquitous. 
     Speaking of hay, about two miles outside of Hazelton, on Highway 83 (The Lawrence Welk Highway*) I saw my first haySTACK and it was not a stack of haybales of which there are many.  I think it was about 10' high and about 30' around.  It made me just want to grab a pitchfork.  Alas, it will probably be turned into three or four bales of hay by tomorrow morning.

     I am camping at a little city park in Hazelton.  I'm all alone here with a picnic shelter and some playground equipment and some horseshoe pits.  Everywhere there are signs that say "No Alcoholic Beverages."  I interpret such signs to mean, "Please Be Discreet."


*The Great Plains, by Ian Frazier, has an interesting essay on Lawrence Welk's impact on North Dakota.  Unfortunately, his hometown, Strasbourg, is 35 miles out of my way.

The North Dakota state capitol building.

Help!  A giant spider is attacking my campsite!
 

August 17: Bismark, North Dakota

     I took a last look at Salem Sue this morning while making my morning coffee and letting the sun dry the dew off of my rain fly.  Like all the real cows I've seen all month, Sue just stare straight ahead.
     Highway 139, a North Dakota Scenic Byway, took me quickly to Mandan where a festival was going on.  Mandan Grilling Days had food vendors featuring barbequed foods like ribs, pulled pork sandwiches, brisket, burger, hotdogs, corn on the cob, etc., live music and adult beverages.
     While I was there, the musical performers were local acts including a twelve year old singer/guitarist who had recently won a prize as the best young act at the State Fair in Minot.  A guy I talked to said I should stick around until evening.  He assured me that a big crowd was expected for a band that was coming all the way from Fargo.
     I hung around there for about an hour and a half and that is something that I rarely do when I am on the road.  I'm usually too anxious to get to my destination.  In this case, my destination was just across the Missouri River in Bismark.  I had a half-rack of ribs and some baked beans and, I must say, it was the best meal I've had since Spokane.  Sorry that I was going to have to miss that great un-named band from Fargo, I went back to my bike and moved on.
     I made a quick stop at the Broken Spoke Bicycle Shop which literally operated out of a guy's garage in a residential section of Bismark.  And he wasn't very friendly.
     Being the largest city since Spokane, I treated myself to a king suite at the Bismark LaQuinta Inn.  Very nice room.  Good view of the city.  Right by the wierd state capitol building.

BBQ festival in Mandan
 

August 16: New Salem, ND

     From Dickinson to New Salem I rode the Interstate Highway, thereby turning a 77-mile Northern Tier ride into a mere 70-mile ride.  With mild winds from the south, I felt great at mile 50.  With increasingly stronger winds from the south and 90 degree temperatures, I was exhausted at mile 70.  I learned that North Dakota is actually quite hilly from the perspective of a bicyclist, and those hills never seem to end.  I was glad to be in New Salem, home to the world's largest holstein cow, Salem Sue, which overlooks I-94 from a flat-topped butte.  New Salem is also home to the high school sports teams named, appropriately, The Holsteins.  Every high school team in North Dakota must have fear in their guts when they have to face the New Salem Holsteins. 
     I went to a grocery store in New Salem and could not believe how empty its shelves were.  While shopping for snacks, I tore my only pair of non-cycling shorts on the corner of a display rack.  It was nothing that a four inch strip of duct tape couldn't repair.

     I've had a number of people texting me and asking for pictures.  Pictures?  A fine author named Edward Abbey has a great quote that goes something like this:  "A word is worth a thousand pictures, if it is the RIGHT word."  I try to write the RIGHT word, but if you must have pictures, I have been posting a few on my Facebook page.  Anybody can view them. 
     To be honest though, I have not been able to figure out how to post photos on this blog with my stupid Blackberry. 

(Since this was written, I have figured it out and have added photos.)

A big ol' stack of haybales.