Day Thirty One - More Presidents and IBEW

Well, I guess we need to work on our time zone acclimatization. We slept in until 6:45 AM! It did feel good, but we have places to go and photos to take so we hustled out to load the bikes and then grab a quick breakfast at the hotel. It was 70 degrees when we left so for a second day we didn't need any additional layers to start off the day.

As you can see from the track below, we headed east in I-94 for about 20 miles before turning northward onto Hwy 14 for an 83 mile leg. It was a very pleasant ride on this two lane road with practically no other traffic. It wasn't twisty at all, though it did undulate up and down enough to make it less boring.

Day 31 Track

Here's the elevaton progile to the entire day. You can see the spikes in the first 80 miles.

Day 31 Elevation Profile

From a scenery standpoint, it was very much like the day before. Maybe a little less hay and a bit more other crops and farm animals, but that was about the extent, at least for the early morning.I took this shot behind me at about 8:00 AM - Look closely and see how bone-straight the road is here...

Straight as an arrow!

As we ran up Hwy 14, we were thinking about a break, but the GPS showed absolutely NOTHING for food along the route. We rolled into a little town called Annamoose hoping maybe there would be something there - there was one bakery/cafe, but it was closed for the day! Also here at Annamoose, the road changed from Hwy 14 to CR-11 - a bit narrower road which would take us up to our turn onto Hwy 19.

Our first waypoint would be the Pierce County line, which wasn't exactly where we expected it to be - which was right at the turn from CR-11 onto Hwy 19.  When we got to where we had it marked on the GPS, it wasn't anywhere around. After checking and re-checking the GPS and Larry's paper maps, we had resigned ourselves that we would have to figure out something else for this one and we headed on eastward on 19. It wasn't about 2 miles when I spotted a county sign - an voila, there it was! There was NO WAY to pul off the road for the photo, but we only saw one other car go by while we were getting our photos.

Presidential Tour - Pierce County

This is what 107 miles of riding in the farm country does to your face shield. This is part of the reason we wear face shields! Nothing a quick wash & wipe can't take care of.

Have to clean face shield every stop!

From here we are continuing east on Hwy 19 which we will take for another 50 miles over to US-281 which is also the west end of Devils Lake. We are still looking for a snack but the GPS only shown one place in Minnewaukan so I add it to our route. When we get there, we have run 152 miles without any breaks other than the 4 minutes we spent getting the Pierce County photos. We pull up to the below scene. Its NOT open, so Larry breaks out his backup plan - some granola bars and we take a quick break.

No lunch here today!

We don't dally there though and we are back on the road on US-281 (which is also still Hwy 19) and in just a mile or two we are turning eastward again on 19 crossing over parts of Devils Lake. This is a really pretty big lake! (Click on the underlined text for more info). Here is one photo I took from the saddle.

Devils Lake as we cross over part of it

Its another 12  more miles into the city of Devils Lake, which is our next waypoint. Even though we are still looking for coffee, we head to the post office to take care of business first.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Devils Lake

Right after the Devils Lake post office, we head to a nearby McDonalds for that overdue coffee break. It's now 11:49 AM, but Larry isn't quite ready for lunch yet so we head back out on the road expecting to catch something another hour or so later. Before we do though we get caught up in chatting with a couple who are just getting out of their car as we are getting to the bikes, and chat them up for some time. We even got an invitation to a fish fry which we had to beg off on. Our coffee break ends up taking 45 minutes!

From here we are now heading east on US-2 which will be another 60 miles to Hwy 18 just north of Larimore ND. We've  both been across US-2, together most recently when we did our USA 4 Corners Tour. It's a nice 4 lane divided highway but not an interstate. There are towns along the way, (Michigan, Petersburg & Niagara) but we have already picked out a lunch spot in Larimore so that's where we head. When we get there, the place shown in the GPS turns out to be a bar and the only food they have is pizza which isn't thrilling Larry, so we turn around and got to a little diner we saw on the way into town. It isn't anything fancy, mostly fried food and the church crowd is in there so we are in for a long wait for our lunch. It turned out to be an hour before we would get rolling again.

From there we were headed down Hwy 18 for another 27 miles to get to our next waypoint - the town of Hatton ND which will give us the "h" in Team Strange Airheads"

Hatton - The "h" in Team Strange Airheads

Continuing down Hwy 18 for another 10 miles where we turn eastward onto Hwy 200 which will take up over to I-29 which we will take south down into Fargo. We were expecting to make our hotel tonight on the one tank of gas, but I am not convinced I will make it the whole way. Each gas station I pass I get more concerned about making it so finally, when I spot a station with gas for $3.49 I decide to relieve any stress by filling there. I am really glad I did too, because when we got onto I-29, the speed limit is 75 and we have a bit of a headwind so I am sucking fuel to the tune of 38 MPG or so and under those circumstances I most certainly wouldn't have made it all the way in. Too bad though because when we got into Fargo there was gas to be had for as low as $3.34 a gallon!

Once in Fargo we are headed for the post office only to be denied once again by a huge "Federal Building/Post office with NO city or state name references anywhere on it! This is like the 3rd or 4th of these... So, plan B - The police station, which is a couple of blocks away. Better luck here.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Fargo

We are almost done for the day. Just one more waypoint before our hotel - The Minnesota State border sign. We are on city streets now and when we get to the border as marked by my GPS there is nothing to be found. Larry says its OK, because the border is actually the river just up ahead. Well,we get across the river and still no sign... We continue on in the direction of our hotel and about another 3/4 miles we suddenly see the State Border sign!

I've Been Everywhere Man - Minnesota

We're just minutes from the hotel now and it's been a long day. And it's up to 94 degrees so it's pretty hot too. I am really looking forward to that 16 oz. Budweiser that's in my cooler....

Today's Stats: 349.1 miles in 8:37 elapsed time, 6:03 saddle time