Mobridge to Minneapolis
Mobridge to Selby – 21 miles
Average Speed – 8.8 mph
We thought that we would beat the wind today, but obviously, that was not the case. We pedaled hard to attain the spectacular average speed for the day. Fortunately, most of the shoulder was very wide, which allowed room for drift caused by the wind, which was very strong.
The severe weather has yet to happen, but it is still windy. We had planned on making it to Bowdle today, so need to make up the distance tomorrow, if possible. Supposedly, the winds will be in our favor, but we won’t know until tomorrow as the forecast here changes constantly. We hope to reach Aberdeen tomorrow and will try for an early start once again.
I didn’t take one single photo today as I feared that the camera would blow away. I have added several podcasts, which I am re-listing below.
Selby to Aberdeen -81.5
Average Speed – 12.6 mph
Those tornadoes never materialized, but some rather intense thunderstorms passed through last night. The early morning was sunny and calm, which was good for us because we had to bike 80 miles to Aberdeen.
Robert had checked the Weather Channel (aka The Weather Soap Opera) for each of the cities that we would pass through today. Sunny, low chance of rain, winds with a W in them and 67 degrees. An ideal day for doing an 80-mile stretch.
We’ve decided that WC, which maybe should be that other WC, just picks out random forecasts from a hat. We biked into a headwind for all but the last 10 miles. We got drenched when the thunderstorms rolled in.
Couldn’t beat this storm
The spray from the semis gave us the wet-rat look and feel. My taillight committed suicide by tossing itself in the middle of the highway and totally disintegrating.
Looks like an interesting rehab
We skipped lunch or second-breakfast in hopes of beating the rain.
It isn’t so bad cycling in the rain when it is warm, but it only hit the mid-50’s today. Skipping lunch turned out to be a wise decision as the last 10-miles of the trip were powered by a tailwind. The wind became so intense just a few minutes after our arrival that I swear that I saw Miss Gulch riding her bicycle in the sky. OK. L. Frank Baum lived here in Aberdeen at some point in his life so I had to mention something about OZ. And the wind really was a-swirling or whatever it did in that movie.
Our cozy and dry spot for the night is the Ward Plaza Hotel, a historic place in downtown. I love the dark green and deep maroon color of the walls in this room.
Perfect after a wet and long day
The hotel is just a block away from a Mexican restaurant where we had lunch. Our last Mexican was in Terry. Not usually eating at bars, we didn’t realize that their Mexican sampler would be a frozen fry-up. This restaurant today was authentic and even served Chilaquiles, which I ordered.
After lunch we went to the Dacotah Prairie Museum, which is kitty-corner to the hotel. Most of the museum was interesting. One display of photos with poems seemed inappropriate and detracted from the rest of the exhibits. Fortunately, that is just a temporary exhibit.
Town Hall
The nearby historic district has an eclectic collection of homes of many architectural styles. Because the wind is still blowing and I am such a wisp of a thing that I may be blown away, we haven’t ventured over there. For now, the pamphlet will have to do.
Aberdeen to Webster – 52 miles
Average Speed – 14.4 mph
In Search of Breakfast
We had a late and filling dinner last night, so the plan was to get in a few miles and stop for breakfast. From looking at our map, we noticed the town of Andover, which seemed to be the same size of Groton, which had plenty of services. We pedaled past Groton as we would have had to leave the highway, although it turned out that we could have taken a direct route through downtown back to Highway 12, which curved around the town. The Andover sign indicated a population of just over 100. We ventured into town anyway, hoping that we would find a café. We spotted a group of men apparently waiting for the senior center to open. They laughed when we asked if there was any place to eat in town and told us about a truck stop in Bristol. They also pointed out that it would be all uphill to that town and they were correct.
Bristol was only 11 miles from Webster, our resting spot for the day, but we survived the 40-mile ride without breakfast. I probably have enough stored energy – i.e. fat- to last me several years’ worth of riding without having to eat. The truck stop doesn’t serve breakfast, so we settled for lunch since it was already almost noon.
Our motel is another that falsely advertises wireless internet. Yes, they do have internet, but you can only get it in the lobby, which means dragging the laptop down and being on public display.
We are in a glacial lake area of the state and there are plenty of fishermen around. We hadn’t planned on fishing, so we went to the Museum of Wildlife, Science & Industry.
Now, don’t think that this is anything like the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry or any other science and industry museum that you have visited before. The museum has 25 buildings on site, many of which have been moved to the location from other towns. Each moved building has photos of the building being moved, which added to the appreciation of the work and expense it took to create this museum and to preserve some typical buildings of the area. A church, blacksmith shop, schoolhouse and other buildings were all moved to Webster.
One curious building is a shoe house, a modern day version of the house that the little old lady with too many children lived in. Appropriately, the house is full of shoes – not kids. Some of the shoes are real shoes, but most of them are souvenir shoes from a local woman’s collection. This woman probably has more shoes than Imelda Marcos.
We spent a few hours here, which was more than I had expected as I am often very skeptical about these museums. The wildlife collection disturbed me mostly because I just don’t understand the thrill of hunting big game. Giraffes, zebras, lions and other trophy animals are all on display in one large area. All of the animals on display are the prizes of a local big game hunter.
Tonight is our last night in South Dakota as we will just cross into Minnesota tomorrow. Now it seems that we are getting somewhere. Having grown up in the Midwest, the area seems much more familiar and so much closer to the Atlantic than it really is. At least it is easy to visualize crossing more familiar territory. Other than being at the Minneapolis airport, I don’t think that I have even been to Minnesota since a family camping vacation when I was still in grade school.
We have pedaled over 1600 miles so far and expect to have a tailwind for the next 1600 miles.
Webster SD to Ortonville MN – 58.5 miles
Average Speed -13.5 mph
Last night at dinner we had a piano player who specialized in songs from our parents’ time. Robert thought they were more from our grandparents’ era. Although it wasn’t a sing-along, there were several people who went to the piano and sang without the aid of words. I thought all these songs were the type that required a bouncing ball flashed on a screen above the words. At least the people, many of them fishermen, were having a good time.
We decided not to start out too early as we only had 50-odd miles to do. It’s funny that 50 has become a low mileage day. It turned out that we did closer to 60 miles today, but we had a wonderful ride along a country road today.
The map showed a dark line just above Route 12, so we left the highway and rode along this very nice highway. We didn’t miss the big cracks or the lack of shoulder that we experienced early in the day. We both thought of our rides to BG, although the terrain was a bit more rolling. The most remarkable aspect of today’s ride was the appearance of trees. We really haven’t seen many trees for the last few hundred miles.
We had lunch at a 50’s diner in Big Stone Lake, just on the other side of Ortonville. After lunch, we had an unpleasant climb up to Ortonville, but it wasn’t anything that we hadn’t done before.
At the top of the hill, is the Big Stone County Museum, which we stopped at when we saw the interesting buildings on the grounds. The idea was to take a quick tour of the place. Our quick tour lasted a few hours. Earl, the director, gave us a tour of a bird museum, which has a collection of all sorts of birds done by a local taxidermist. I don’t know how quickly a taxidermist works, but this guy obviously spent much of his life taxiderming these different fowls. Earl knew every type of bird that was in this massive collection.
Some are the birds that we have seen along the way – mallard ducks, which we often inadvertently flush from the grass, making them look like those in the hunting pictures displayed on many a wall. Just today, our hearts stopped when a pheasant took flight from the tall grass near the road. They don’t realize that we don’t see them at all until they decide that we have threatened them.
Just today, the octagonal school house was placed on its foundation at the museum. Neither of us recall ever having seen an octagonal school before. This one was moved from another spot as was the church on the grounds.
We aren’t sure of our route into Minneapolis. It looks as if we will have a few long days ahead of us. Before we know it, we will be out of this state. South Dakota flew quickly by. Maybe any state crossing from now on will seem quick relative to Montana. We now feel that we are making progress. We are in Great Lakes territory, which is very familiar to us.
Ortonville to Clara City – 66.66 miles
Average Speed – 11 mph
We reconsidered our original route plan after receiving advice from the locals. We don’t know if we made a good decision or not. The first person told us to continue on US 12 because even though it had no shoulder, it had little traffic. Another told us to avoid US 12 because it had no shoulder and enough traffic to make the riding unpleasant. We opted to take Route 7, because it had a shoulder and lower traffic than US 12. Well, the shoulder wasn’t so great, but probably better than no shoulder and the traffic was pretty insignificant all the way to Montevideo. That changed as we headed east. There was quite a bit of traffic and the shoulder leaves much to be desired.
We had breakfast in Montevideo, which gave the wind and heat a chance to increase. Fighting the wind gets old after a few days, but this is really the first day since Hood River that the temperature was so high. We made it to Hood River before we had to deal with the late afternoon heat. Not so today. It was above 90 and humid when we reached Clara City. We spotted the motel and found a note on the office door advising us to call a number for a room. We don’t have cell service here, so we had to go back to the BP and feed the phone lots of change as the number was long distance. The guy on the other end of the phone said that somebody should be there. When nobody showed up within the hour, we called again and were told that there were keys in the mailbox and that we could choose a room. During this time, huge, dark clouds filled the sky and the wind kicked up even more. The storm blew over, but there were warnings. We arrived here just in the nick of time.
Nothing is open in Clara City on Sunday except for the BP. Their sign said that they had pizza, so that was on our menu for dinner, until we tried to buy it. Seems that pizza isn’t sold after 1pm. Seems rather strange, so we found a pre-wrapped sandwich.
We should inspect the bagels that we bought in Lemmon. Even though they don’t expire for another week, I am not so sure what shape they are in. They may have been doused in the last storm.
Tomorrow is another long day and possibly another night without internet. Motels are few and far between in these parts, as is everything else. Our destination tomorrow is at the start of a rail trail, the first that we have come across so far this trip. That will take us pretty close to a pathway that goes into the Twin Cities.
Clara City to Winsted – 70 miles
Average speed – 10.2 mph
The storms raged all last night, but at least we weren’t in the tent, which at one point seemed our only option. At 4 am, the lightening continued, so I wasn’t sure if we would be free of rain by the time we got up. The storm knocked out the electric at some point during the night, so our plan to get up at 5 changed a bit. With all the clouds in the sky, the morning didn’t dawn brightly as it usually does. We really wanted to beat both the heat and the headwinds forecast for the day.
We had bagels with peanut butter for breakfast, with the intention of stopping for a second breakfast in Cosmos. The first track of “Music from the Cosmos” started playing every single time that I saw the sign for Cosmos.
It was already hotter this morning than it had been many other afternoons. We stopped at a gas station for good refreshments and continued on until Robert got a flat tire. Flat number 2 – 1800 miles into the trip, the result of running over glass.
Believe it or not; it was the front tire that went flat.
When we reached Cosmos and that music started playing again, we were directed to the place with the best breakfast in town. There really weren’t too many options in such a small town and we never would have gone to the bar to find breakfast in the first place. We asked the bartender about alternate routes to get us to Winsted. She knew of none, so we asked at the post office and were advised to stay on 7, because it was easy to get lost if we decided to follow the labyrinth of back roads. We had been hearing about Winstock, and that was the reference point for all the advice that we were given. Winstock appears to be the country music version of Woodstock. Lucky for us, we just missed this big event by one day.
We carried on horrid Hwy 7 toward Hutchinson, but just short of Hutchinson, we came upon some detour signs. Since it said that the road was open to local traffic, we decided to ignore the detour, mostly because it would put us even more into the wind than we had been. When we came to the part of the road that was totally impassable, we noticed a sign for the Luce Line Trail to our right. Now, we had seen a snowmobile trail running parallel to us for several miles. We followed the sign, which led to a park with a map of the trail. The trail actually started in Cosmos. Not one person had mentioned that as an option when we inquired about alternate routes. We knew that the trail did start in Winsted from the information that we found on the website. We jumped on the trail at Hutchinson and rode it the rest of the day. At Silver Lake, we were ready for more refreshments and found Molly’s Cafe. We had the best root beer float and milkshake of the trip and informed the waitress of this trivial fact. I don’t think that we have had more than two root beer floats or milkshakes, so our sample size is definitely not valid, but these were definitely very good. Maybe it was the dust from the trail or the 90+ degree temperature. The waitress insisted that they were so good because they make everything with love. Guess that works.
The trail surface is “natural” from Cosmos to Winsted. It resembled a tractor trail on a farm, but protected us from the wind and the sun. The surface wasn’t much worse than the shoulder of Route 7. It was a relief to get off the trail and into Winsted, which had only one very small motel, which only had smoking rooms available.
We headed to the library and asked the librarian about trails that connect to the Luce Line as we approach the Twin Cities. She recommended some sites, but said that none of them include all the trails. At least we had a general idea of where we would be headed tomorrow, which would be another early day. Tomorrow will be the first day that we have been to a big city in many weeks. It should be interesting.
Winsted to Minneapolis – 51 miles
Average Speed – 10.2 mph
We didn’t notice how smoky the room was last night, most likely because we smelled far worse than the room when we arrived. But, the stench made it difficult for me to sleep. We got out of there early as today was a very big day for us because we are staying with a former student of Robert’s and I am meeting one of my friends as well.
We went back to continue on the Luce Line Trail, but couldn’t find the trailhead, which logically, should have been right across the road from where the trail ended coming from the other direction. There are no directional signs for guidance, so we stopped and asked. We had to backtrack, but eventually found the trail again after wasting much time. We followed the trail all the way to Wayzata and tried to find our way to the Cedar Lake Trail to connect to the Midtown Greenway. We encountered some construction and a detour, but while consulting our map, Norm who was out for a spin asked if he could help us find something. He gave us directions and then offered to lead us to the Midtown Greenway. Had it not been for him, we would have missed one important turn as it is not marked on the trail. It took us several hours to get to our destination from Wayzata, even though we had been told that it was only a distance of 12 miles. It was definitely our slowest time ever.
We easily found Christine’s house, which is conveniently located near the end of the trail. We met Marci, did laundry and borrowed Mitch’s car to take a look downtown. We haven’t seen a large city with skyscrapers since Portland.
Riding in a car seemed odd as did riding through the suburbs. The number of people walking, cycling and inline skating impressed us as did the vast network of trails, which have lanes for cycling in each direction and a walking lane. The surface was the most pleasant that we have ridden since the shoulder of I-94 in Treasure County Montana, many miles ago.
Tomorrow we head southeast and the winds will be strong out of the southeast. I seriously considered heading northwest tomorrow, just because the daily winds become more and more aggravating. Somebody suggested doing a tour based on wind direction. Simply head out with the tailwind. Now that sounds like my kind of tour.
