Author: Paul Rito (Page 13 of 32)

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.”

40.3 miles, 1579′ of climbing, (1749.1 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

Today we reached out Western and Northern-most points in Medora and the Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit. On the way in we stopped at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center where Bonnie from Bellefonte saw my Penns Valley Pedals & Pints jersey and introduced herself. We got a good first look at the Badlands and headed on to Medora.

We set up camp in the Red Trail Campground, showered, and got ready to attend the Medora Musical — something everyone we met said was a must see.

51.3 miles, 1508′ of climbing, (1708.8 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

As mentioned in the previous post, Glen Ullin wasn’t a peaceful night. We got up, made coffee on a pile of concrete railroad ties (no picnic tables by the tent sites), had a spot of java and wandered over to where our electronics were charging and Paul and Sam were having breakfast. They were looking at headwinds all day which meant we were going to have tailwinds again. Yeah!

? miles, ? of climbing, (over 1700 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

Medora, ND just a quick update on our tour. We haven’t had a chance to catch up on the blog as we’ve been having too much fun! After Glen Ullin, we stayed in Dickinson and then rode to Medora & Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

58.4 miles, 2382′ of climbing, (1657.4 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

We took it slow this morning for three reasons: a relatively easy ride to Glen Ullin, there’s not a lot to do or see in GU, and it started thunderstorming. We were packed up before that and saw what was coming on the radar and headed to the visitor’s center. We watched a movie about the Mandan Indians and Lewis & Clark and Custer and toured the museum in the center.

65.3 miles, 1630′ of climbing, (1599 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

Good sleep and off to Bismark today. Still have a tailwind: at least that’s what the weather says. We’ll see. A little slow moving today, we made some breakfast, some coffee, packed up the tent, and hit the road.

69.6 miles, 2020′ of climbing, (1533.7 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

Alex, the guy we talked with yesterday afternoon, proved to be a weather seer. Today we did indeed have a tailwind and it was delicious. Still had 70 miles to cover today and it took us 7 hours. We made a stop at the market in Napolean as the bartender at Dina’s told us they had better selection and prices than the Co-op in Gackle (which wasn’t much more than a convenience store).

63 miles, 1604′ of climbing, (1405 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

It was a hard day all around. Started OK with everything drying out nicely, but once on the road, we encountered what we knew was coming but always hoped didn’t: Headwinds. Normal headwinds for ND, but we had mostly escaped them on this tour except in the early part of our ride in Ohio.

63 miles, 1604′ of climbing, (1405 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

The Solbergs fed us a filling breakfast of eggs, toast, and potatoes (organic, from their son’s distribution company), let us tag along on the chicken coop opening, and also importantly, do a load of laundry.

17 miles, 110′ of climbing, (1341.6 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

It’s nice to have an easy day planned every once in a while. Today was one of those days. The camping equipment needed to be dried out, so we laid things in the sun, made coffee, had breakfast, and Dana went for a run. Our next host was 13 miles away, so we planned to hang around Fargo that afternoon.