Wibaux to Mobridge
Wibaux
The weather forecast for today just didn’t cut it so we decided to stay in Wibaux to avoid riding in the wet, windy and cold conditions. Well, the huge amounts of predicted rain have yet to materialize and maybe we could have dodged the drips, but the wind and cold would have made that unpleasant.
This tractor ran forever and only quit working a few months after its owner died.
Now, Wibaux may not be the number one destination for most tourists, especially those with vehicles with engines. We started out the day by borrowing an umbrella from the front desk here at the Beaver Creek Inn and Suites and walked into town. Our first stop was Montana Pewter, but it appeared to be closed so we walked on over to the Wibaux Museum and took a tour, which will be available as a podcast in the near future.
The Wibaux Museum consists of several buildings including a Barber Shop, the in-town office of Pierre Wibaux, a livery and a train car. I especially enjoyed the permanent machine in the Barber Shop, which I thought was an electroshock therapy contraption.
Some think that I needed electroshock therapy for considering this bicycling trip, but this is a simple machine for getting a permanent. I chose the Shirley Temple style.
Glad that we aren’t riding a tricycle like this.
Ole made this shoe for himself because he had one short leg – or one long leg depending on how you look at it.
The last paragraph on this sign explains it all. No wonder we are STILL in Montana.
Zach’s Dad Caught These Rattlers in the Midst of a Mating Ritual
After a thorough tour of the grounds with Lisa and Zach, we went back to Montana Pewter and chatted with Pat, the owner. One of the most interesting and most popular items in Pat’s shop is a three way jewelry box. The lid is also a pin and the box holds a necklace. Across the street from Pat’s is the Just Your Era antique store. It’s frightening to see things that I remember well, now called antiques. Even if you have no interest in antiques, a stop here will bring back childhood memories. Well, that is if you can relate to the variety of things found in this store.
No town named for a person would be complete without a statue of that person. In the museum, the photos of Pierre Wibaux depict him as a businessman.
The statue depicts him as a cowboy and he comes complete with binoculars, rifle, chaps and cowboy hat.
Of course, he was looking north towards his ranch.
Wibaux to Baker – 46 miles
Average Speed – 14 mph
Imagine a cluster of dome-shaped, striated rock forms that suddenly appear on the featureless landscape. Insert into the space above. This is the photo that we missed because we refused to stop on our 35+mph descent from one of the hills that we labored up. This particular cluster seemed almost out of place here, but the fog shrouded much of the countryside, so who really knows what we would have seen had the skies been clear and free of pea soup.
Starting out this morning
Nothing in any of the forecasts that we had seen called for fog, not even patchy fog. We put on the flashers and hoped that we could be seen from behind. Montana 7 was a great road for traveling. Traffic is light and the road surface is good.
Don’t know how much of this type of scenery was hidden by the fog
Oil fields near Baker
Tonight is our last night in Montana – unless it snows tomorrow.
In our 1200 miles of travel, we have encountered only six touring cyclists, two of which were a couple and traveling together. Those starting a transcontinental from the east would not likely be in these parts so soon. We expect to see more cyclists once we reach Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Baker, MT to Bowman, ND – 46 miles
Average Speed – 13.7 mph
Last night we stayed at the Montana Motel in Baker, which came with a fully-equipped kitchen. We were tempted to cook a meal.
We bid farewell to Montana today, a state that supplied us with fond memories, great views, tough climbs and lousy weather. Early on we passed by several oil fields, in both MT and ND.
Oddly enough, we had to turn around and read the Welcome to Montana sign to be sure that we had crossed the border. Perhaps North Dakota doesn’t have the funding for such signs, since they obviously have no money for their roads. Route 12 lost its shoulder as soon as we crossed the border. The edge of the road was both crowned and heaved making riding close to the white line very difficult. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic. If this wasn’t enough, every few feet of roadway had cracks and dips, which made riding very unpleasant and bone jarring.
Outside Marmarth
Early on the riding was near perfect and we were traveling at a decent pace. I thought that we might stop in Bowman for lunch and then head on to Hettinger, an additional distance of 45 miles. Because there was nothing between Bowman and Hettinger, we thought it best to call the motels in Hettinger and reserve a room. That saved us from cycling the extra distance and being left without a place to stay. It seems that a large wedding group took all the available rooms in Hettinger.
We stayed and toured the Pioneer Trails Regional Museum, where we spent several hours talking to the paleontologists. We hadn’t realized that it was nearly closing time when we finally left. Among the topics we discussed was the new (or soon to be opened) Creationist dinosaur museum in Glendive. Guess that must be based on the Flintstones.
The Pioneer Trails Regional Museum Sod House
Bowman ND to Lemmon SD -67 miles
Average Speed – 14mph
The North Dakota Landscape
The sky was blue, but hazy this morning, which sure beats the rain or snow any day. We started out with a nice shoulder and smooth road until after Scranton. From there the road was in absolutely horrid condition with so many intermittent bumps that it felt as if we were riding down the world’s longest staircase. This was rather unsettling and I expected parts to start falling off the bike or off me. In the midst of this horrid surface, we came across a sign that said “Rough Road For The Next 13 miles”. We couldn’t figure out why they bothered putting that sign 20 miles after the rough road started. After Hettinger, the road did improve, but that tailwind that always hits us in the face didn’t.
Reading About the Last Buffalo Hunt
Just two miles out of Lemmon, I had to stop and have an energy bar to make it over that last hill into town.
Much of Lemmon is for sale. Two of the three motels that were listed on the South Dakota Tourism website are closed and have been out of business for some time. Actually, the locals had never even heard of the one motel that was listed. There is a Century 21 sign on the fence outside of the motel where we are staying. It appears that Lemmon has seen better days.
Right on the highway is the Grand River Museum started by a family who came to this area and ranched many years ago. The incentive to start this museum was the many fossils that they found on their ranch and some of their finds are incredible.
Triceratops Skull in Grand River Museum
There will be an upcoming podcast with Phyllis explaining what they have and giving a short tour of the museum. They take the Creationist view of the dinosaurs at this museum. Besides dinosaurs, there are several displays focusing on ranching, branding, early life and other elements of ranch living. The museum is well laid out and not overwhelming in the least.
Contrast that to the next place that we visited – The Petrified Wood
Park and Museum. Now, maybe I was tired because we biked a long way today and it was about a two-mile walk back into town or maybe I just didn’t like this conglomeration of ugliness. I read over the description of the park, which compares itself to Garden of The Gods.
This place petrified me.
Ummmmm…. It has been some time since I last visited Garden of The Gods, but I see little similarity between the two. Well, they are both outside, so there’s the similarity. After looking around at these curious petrified oddities, I went inside to the museum. Talk about junk from people’s attics. The museum was overwhelming and gave me that feeling that I got when I went into a Wal-mart.
Actually, there were some interesting things in the museum, but the uninteresting things really distracted me. The park gets 6000 visitors per year and along with the museum is free.
As of today, we have crossed five states. Seems interesting that we crossed into South Dakota so quickly, considering all that time it took to get across Montana. In a few days, we will be crossing into the Central Time Zone. That will be our next milestone.
Tomorrow, we are staying in Watauga, which doesn’t seem to have much of anything and that includes internet service. We should be back online Tuesday.
Lemmon to Watauga, SD – 30 miles
Average Speed – 11.2 mph
We changed our itinerary today because of stories that we heard about our original destination. Sometimes, we take some things with a grain of salt as we hear enough negatives about Troy, NY, where we own a home. But, when several people raise eyebrows when we mention McLaughlin, we take notice. So, instead of doing a long day to McLaughlin today as planned and a short day to Mobridge tomorrow, we decided to do a short day to Watauga today and a longer day to Mobridge tomorrow. We heard good things about the newer Dakota Countryside Inn in Watauga where we are staying and the Inn turned out to be much better than we had imagined. In fact, this is probably one of the nicer places that we have stayed on the trip. Nice is always relative. The trailer motels were nice when they were the only place to stay in town and really, most of the motels where we have stayed have been comfortable and perfectly fine. But, the Watauga Inn is purpose built and more like a bed and breakfast than a typical motel and has a more homey and more personal feel. We enjoyed chatting with Eleanor, the owner, who provided us with a good overview of life in these parts. We even have use of the kitchen to make spaghetti with sauce from a can. There are no services in Watauga, so we had no dining options.
Like many of the towns we have passed through, much is for sale, closed or abandoned. Robert trekked back to downtown Lemmon last night to pick up the spaghetti and sauce that we cooked for dinner since there were no grocery stores between Lemmon and here.
The ride today with a strong headwind really taxed the quads. The wind will change again tomorrow, so that it will be in our faces again. We plan on leaving at the crack of dawn in an attempt to avoid some of the wind. Will we ever have a wind from the west?
We have gone over 1400 miles and the prevailing wind has rarely been from the west. Maybe we will get luckier for the next 1400 miles.
We saw two touring cyclists, one on a recumbent, heading west. We were so excited to see them that we ran out on the porch and yelled to them. We tried to guess where they had started from this morning and wondered if Lemmon, which is the only place with services, would be their destination for the day. Maybe one of these days we will run into somebody and be able to exchange stories. We would probably just hear how surprised they were to have such great tailwinds.
We remarked that the Watauga Inn felt like home as it is set up like a house, but a house with ten bedrooms. Our day here had been very pleasant until after dinner when some families with young children arrived. We and some construction workers also staying at the inn had to get up in the wee hours of the morning to do our daily work. We went to bed early enough only to be disturbed by screaming children running all around the house. Their parents obviously didn’t care that there were other guests at the inn who maybe wanted to get some sleep. I don’t understand why parents let their kids run wild in a place such as this, or any public place for that matter. Their total lack of consideration ruined what had been a visit back home.
Watauga to Mobridge – 68 miles
Average Speed – 10.3 miles per hour
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Morning came too early because of those unbridled urchins at the inn last night. Getting up at 4:45 wasn’t easy, but necessary because of the predicted headwinds, which always increase as the earth warms.
We started out fully bundled as early morning has yet to be warm. This will likely change very soon. We made good time to McLaughlin, the town with the tainted reputation. We ate a second breakfast here and escaped unscathed without hearing nary a gunshot. After McLaughlin, we had 30 miles of absolute nothingness. But hills and headwinds are something. The road got horrid after McLaughlin. Kah-blunk, kah-blunk, kah-blunk. The pavement separation with its sinkhole-sized cracks rattled our cages again today. If that weren’t enough, we climbed 1400 feet, much of it steep and all of it into a fierce headwind. Somehow, we managed that last section not too much worse for the wear.
Another Hill to Climb
I missed the ideal time to attach the helmet cam when we had a decent road surface. That lasted only a few minutes, but the view from the crest of a hill was spectacular and showed us yet another face of the South Dakota countryside.
We crossed down the Grand River and then had to climb back out of the valley slowly cranking up an incredibly steep hill. The Missouri River came into view and we pedaled down to the shoulderless bridge. Fortunately, construction was going on, so we had one lane of traffic part way across. At the end of the bridge we had to climb, but at least the shoulder reappeared.
The MO Bridge
We crossed into the Central Time Zone halfway across the bridge and at the end Robert’s phone started ringing. Son Nathan was in South Carolina with his friend, whose car had broken down in the middle of nowhere. We hadn’t had cell service for some time so found it interesting and convenient for Nathan and Aaron that we could be contacted.
It turns out that those cyclists that we saw yesterday stayed at the same hotel, The Wrangler Inn, where we are staying tonight. They have far more energy than we do as it seems that they were planning a century ride to Lemmon.
We also heard from our daughter who tried to call us last night at the inn and she was given a fax number to call by the person who answered the phone. Seems that some guests, whose names we won’t mention, get credit for this.
I called to book a spot for tomorrow and when the proprietor asked when we would arrive, I told her that it depended on the weather. I had heard that there would be thunderstorms tonight with some continuing in the morning. She mentioned that tornadoes are predicted for tomorrow. We just got snowed on, so how can we be in tornadoes already? If the tornado created winds from the west, we would be like Miss Gulch and take advantage of those winds. But, the winds will come from the south. Maybe we should tour Canada.
We don’t have cable at home so obviously don’t watch the Weather Channel, which is worse than a soap-opera. They drag out weather incidents forever without getting to the forecast. I should be watching the special hurricane week stories, but just can’t take the suspense.
One interesting thing that was on the weather channel is that two girls in Schenectady were struck by lightening today. Fortunately, they both survived although both suffered burns, one severe.
