Written by Dave

Day 41 – July 8 – 73 Miles, 2,569 feet climbing (Interior to Murdo)

Last night at camp just after dinner we had a second afternoon rain shower that sent us all scrambling for the tents. It happened around 6PM and I thought we were down for the count. I even had a short nap while we waited out the rain. To our surprise, the sun came out about 7PM and the rest of the evening was dry. We even got to have ice-cream at the camp kiosk and catch a bit of the sunset on the nearby Badlands hills.

This morning we were up and out of camp early enough to enter Badlands NP without having to show our lifetime senior passes (or help the guard figure out how 4 bikes can enter on one card). The light was great this morning and it would have been easy for me to take 100s of photos. As it was I took way less than that but still managed to hold the group up at each of the viewpoints. It was only 9 miles to the park exit and the end of the Badlands photo opportunities so everyone humoured me with my dawdling.

At the end of the 9 mile park section we turned eastward on a service road that more or less followed Interstate 90 for the rest of the day. Given that the speed limit on the interstate is 75 MPH and the speed limit on the service road is 55 MPH, there will be no prizes for guessing how few cars we had pass us on the service road. We rode 64 miles on the service road and if we had counted 10 cars passing us during the entire 4.5 hours, I would be surprised. As it was, we didn’t count – instead we enjoyed a long day of two abreast riding.

The service road had no shoulder and rotten rumble strips right on the white line. It didn’t matter, see traffic note above. Overall the grades on the service rode were less smoothed out than the interstate. We found ourselves above the interstate one minute, below it a minute. It didn’t matter, see traffic note above. Really, the only downside of the service road was the fairly frequent hoards of grasshoppers that we encountered. They sit on the road until we reach them and they hop in any random old direction. Only a couple would reach head height and mostly they just bounced off our wheels or bags, sometimes they bounced off of us. Riding in front had the advantage of no grasshopper ‘wake’ to ride through, but it also meant more crunching when running over dead or slow moving grasshoppers. We’ve seen heaps of cars with hundreds of dead grasshoppers on their grills. Thankfully, we don’t travel fast enough for them to stick to us even if we mortally wound them.

Other than my many Badlands stops, we had two other stops along the route today. The first was at a servo in Kadoka where we grabbed a muffin and water. The second was in the touristic 1880 town. The latter was definitely more scenic and interesting as the “town” is made up of a bunch of old buildings moved the middle of nowhere on I90 so that tourist slow down and spend some of their money in South Dakota. We didn’t go into the “town” as it is fee based and surrounded by a tall no-see-through fence. In order to keep the local economy going, however, Chris did purchase a hamburger in the old train cafe. I didn’t buy a hamburger but I took a photo of the old train for this blog, to give the town some free publicity.

Other than grasshopper hoards, the other exciting thing that happened today was that we crossed from the Mountain TZ to Central TZ. All of our GPS based devices adjusted around the same point when they received a satellite signal that told them to adjust. Manual watches had to be adjusted when we reached Murdo.

There used to be a campground in Murdo but it has closed so we had to get a hotel. Murdo isn’t much of a town but it is easily the biggest town that we found on our route today. All the hotels cost the same amount so it’s just about picking one and getting checked in. We are in the American Inn tonight. Murdo is sort of famous for its car museum with, get this, over 280 cars. Given the number of times it was featured on the outside of the building, clearly they are most proud of the General Lee car from the TV show Dukes of Hazard.  Our friend Lynn from Rapid City went to high school with “Daisy” from Dukes and even with that intro we decided to skip the museum. None of us are really car people so the best we could muster up was a walk to the grocery store and a walk past the museum. Oh well, you can’t (or don’t have to) see everything on these trips.

Tomorrow is our last day riding with Curtis. Wednesday he is cutting off down the Missouri River heading for Iowa and a big state ride there. We’ll miss his good humor, cooking, cleaning, hot water service in the mornings and most of all his leading the paceline for the past 2,000+ miles. But the Chris Crossing show must go on. Chris is riding much stronger now, he has learned how to get the stove going for hot water and he claims to know how to make tuna noodle casserole. Time will tell if Chris can fill Curtis’s big shoes.