6 miles cycling, 12 miles hiking (1755.1 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.
Monday morning we rode to the Maah Daay Hey trail, stashed the bikes in a grove of trees and headed into the heat of the Badlands. One of the things we did take away from the musical last night was a quote from an army general in Roosevelt’s time: “The Badlands are like Hell with the fire put out.”
Apropos. We both had two full bottles of water on what we first thought was going to be an out-and-back 3 miles in to the first river crossing on the trail. The “river” turned out to be an easily crossed stream, so we consulted our maps and found we could make a loop on the Big Plateau and Ekblom trails. We made it to the top of the plateau and the stunning scenery all accompanied by the chirps of the prairie dogs lining the trail. Aside from the picturesque views, the hike itself was pretty grueling in the 95 degree heat and very little shade.
And, since Dana was wearing a PSU tee, we met two different solo hikers — one from Williamsport (“Go Penn State”) and one from the Philly area. The Philly guy gave us his trail name “Monster Food” — he was hiking the 140 miles of the Maah Daah Hey in out-and-back sections.
When we turned onto the Ekblom trail for the .9 mile trek back to the Maah Daah Hey, we saw a guy rinsing mud off his Tevas in a spring. He said the “river crossing” coming up was a deep muddy creek and he turned back. For us it was that or a very, very long trek backtracking our whole 8.5 mile route so far. We reached the creek and tried to find the lowest spot where the bison hadn’t trampled the water even deeper. We took off our shoes and somehow made it across without falling in. That left us with mud up to our knees — I went to another part of the bank and rinsed most of the mud off. Dana chose to keep hers and we both took off barefoot on the soft dirt trail while the mud dried. That was until the thistles started to take over and Dana put on her Crocs and I used my socks to scrape the rest of the mud off my feet and put my sneakers back on. We had 3 miles to get back to the bikes and it was a challenge. Dana ended up with some blisters and we both rationed our water and ran out with a mile left to go.
When we got back to the bikes, we were treated to ice cold water from the Yeti mug I keep on my bike. It holds ice for most of the day even in the worst heat and those few drops gave us enough refreshment to get back on the bikes for the two miles back into town. On the way we did stop at a city park and refilled our bottles, and I went on to the local convenience store for a six-pack of PBR and Dana scouted out places to eat that night. Back in camp we had one of the best showers we had.
In the evening, we went to the town square for a concert which we found out was a prelim for the dinner and a show about Teddy Roosevelt, put on by the same folks who produced the Medora Musical. We passed on that and ended up at the Little Missouri restaurant for a meal and lots and lots of cold water.
We’ve been camping every night since our WS hosts in Fargo/Horace — 8 days straight, with spotty power and wi-fi (and why I’m behind on the blog. And, we count the cabin in Dickinson as camping!)
