Written by Dave

Day 43 – July 10 – 83 Miles, 2,260 feet climbing (Left Tailrace near Fort Thompson to Huron)

It was quite hot sleeping alongside the Missouri River last night. All of us left out tent flies open and more or less slept without being under our sleeping bags. Forecast for the next few days is hot and it was warm today but really a persistent head/side wind was more an issue than the heat.

This morning, just like every other morning, except that one day in Cody, WY, Curtis was ready to ride 30 minutes before Chris (25 minutes before Nancy and I). We only planned on riding 3 miles together but today, Curtis decided that waiting, while getting swarmed by mozzies was more than he could stand. He rode from camp on his own at 6:15 after giving us each a hearty goodbye – and we are now down to three Chris Crossers.   Feels a bit surreal but I guess we’ll reluctantly get used to it.

We couldn’t really leave much before 6:45 because it was only 3 miles to the Ft Thompson mini-mart and they don’t open until 7AM. We were sure to not find any sort of snack stop on the road until the 47 mile mark so we picked up a couple ready-made brekkie sandwiches to get us through the morning. We rode out of Fort Thompson on Highway 34 and boy what a slog it turned out to be. At the Missouri River we left “West River” and entered “East River”. We’d been told that East River was flat and that the hills ended at the river. Well, I am here today to report that the hills don’t end at the river. East River became much flatter after we completed the 47 miles to Wessington Springs. Before that it was one continuous set of “one mile down, one mile up” hills. Add to this a nice cross wind from the north and it made for slow riding.

At Wessington Springs we turned left (downhill but into the wind) and found a small sandwich/ice cream shop for an early lunch. It was such a tiring day, this was also where I took the last photo of the day! We had a choice of riding back to up to the highway to rejoin the car route, or continuing on through town and trusting Komoot when it said that all of the roads today were sealed/paved. That was a bit of a mistake. We ended up too far down to turn around when we encountered the first dirt road. We had three roads altogether and all were recently graded but it was still a slog with the build wind and bit of loose gravel to slow us. We eventually found pavement again when we re-joined Highway 281.

We only had 25 miles riding from the end of the dirt road but we were all pretty much ready to be done riding. At the end of one particularly hard 6 mile headwind section where Chris was riding behind Nancy and I (with Nancy on the front), Chris practically begged to have a stop and snack. This wasn’t long after we cleared the dirt roads and Chris’s dust voice sounded like an 80 year old man – quite funny actually. We all needed the snack however.

All of us took the lead today at various times and it was OK, but truth be told, we were all missing having Curtis sitting on the front of the paceline for mile after mile like he has for the last 6 weeks. I missed his strong pulls but I didn’t miss his big Casper the Friendly ghost hoodie. Every day for the past six weeks Curtis wore a billowing white hoodie to protect himself from the sun.  Any time he was second wheel behind me, I couldn’t see anything but the hoodie when I checked in my mirror. You take the good with the bad I guess – missing you already Curtis.

We rode straight to the Quality Inn in Huron, got checked in, shower, laundered and ate. We’re all pretty bushed and ready for bed. We need a good night sleep as we have another 75 miles to ride tomorrow and before that, a Quality Inn brekkie buffet to destroy – some things have to be done.