Bismarck

Our goal for today was to be Steele, ND. The wind prediction for today was WNW 25 mph, but it didn't feel like that this morning. It was cold when I walked Remy -- about 30 degrees -- but it started warming up pretty quickly. I didn't want to have Tayler drive me way back to Gackle (which was where we would have stayed last night if there had been a hotel, and if I had been able to ride out from Enderlin yesterday), so I looked on my phone map tool for "walking" routes to Steele. It looked as though there was something fairly direct, so Remy and I got prepared and started out from downtown Jamestown.

There were a couple of fairly good-sized hills just as we left the downtown area (Jamestown is named after the James River, so it lies in a valley), but it leveled out quickly. There was no shoulder. The pavement dropped off by about 8-10 inches to a gravel shoulder, but there was very little traffic, and what there was seemed respectful. We rode out about 3.25 miles until our route turned to a gravel road. I had no idea how long the gravel would go. I knew there were at least 15 more miles on that particular road, and I didn't think it would be particularly safe riding all of that on gravel. I started forward just to test it, and after about a tenth of a mile I had determined that this wouldn't work.

Tayler was comfortably ensconced at Babb's Coffee House in Jamestown, so we rode back to her, had a cup of coffee and (a mistake) a gluten free monster cookie (the mistake part was the peanuts). She finished Slaughterhouse 5, and I started the next Harry Dresden. After a bit, we packed ourselves into the car and headed for Bismarck.

Temperatures and wind speeds and directions look like they'll be steadily improving over the next few days. I plan/hope to ride to Glen Ullin tomorrow and Dickinson on Monday. As the temperatures improve, we are keeping our eyes out for camping places, rather than hotels. The hotels we've stayed at have been fine, quite good for the most part, but one starts to feel a little plastic after a while. Same ol', same ol'.

I think, if I really wanted to get to know North Dakota and see its beauty, I'd need to plan a trip just for that purpose, and it probably wouldn't cut right through the center of the state. Montana, on the other hand, has many parks of all kinds along our route and throughout. We are excited by some hot springs that fall on a southern loop between Great Falls and Missoula, as well as the beautiful photos available on the Internet. Since we've cut out a lot of time with driving, we plan to take the approximately 8-day loop, rather than a more direct, 3-day, route.

So here we are at Americinn again. They've been fairly reasonable and have lots of things we like including, today in particular, laundry facilities. When we arrived in Bismarck a couple of hours ago, we ate at Space Aliens Grill and Bar, run by the same people as the one we saw in Fargo. It was an alien-themed Chuck-E-Cheese, basically, with a slightly separated area for people over 21. The food was reasonably good.

I look forward to being able to take some pictures of a bicycle route and tell you more about riding in the next couple of days. In the meantime, everyone including Remy is having kind of a grouchy day. Hoping to wake up to sunshine and reasonable winds tomorrow.