Day Thirty - Presidents Day

Today was to be another shorter day so we really did sleep in a bit, not arising until 6:30 AM. We loaded up then got a decent breakfast and hit the road at 7:45 AM. The temp was 66 degrees so I went without any extra gear, though Larry stuck with his liner. We headed down through downtown Sturgis and once out of town we turned north on Hwy 79 for what would be a 133 mile leg.

Day 30 Track

On the way out of town we saw a a lot of accomodations for the rally bikers. There was a huge place with what looked to be 50 or more cabins, and after we turned on 79 even more places advertising camping spaces. Even at 10+ miles out there were still some bars and inns catering to the motorcycle crowd, so it IS a big thing for the town. Here's what the road looked like after we started up 79.

Bear Butte ahead

The terrain didn't vary much all morning. It was lots of fields, often covered in hay or hay bales. The elevation "rolled" a lot, but overall we were in an all day descent that would see us drop for 3700 ft where we left to 1750 ft when we arrived in Bismarck ND at the end of the day. Along the way we did spot several pronghorn antelope - well off the road. This next photo taken looking behind me it typical of what we saw much of the day.

Check out all the bales of hay!

It would be 67 miles - about an hour and twenty minutes before we would make our first stop - for a scheduled waypoint - The Harding County line for our Presidential tour. 

Presidential Tour - Harding County line

Not too long after the county line photo (about 10 minutes), we could see hills in the horizon - and here the terrain would change noticeably. The hills in this photo are contained in the Custer National Park.

Custer National Park ahead

And here is yet more hay...

Hay and more hay

By now we are getting itchy for a coffee break, but GPS searched ahead aren't encouraging - showing nearest food of any kind is 70 miles ahead "as the crow flies" meaning it could be more like 90 miles...

70 merges with 20 for a short bit to jog eastward before splitting off north again. We had hopes that the town named Reva might have something just not listed in the GPS, but it was little more than a post office so we kept on. Eventually we arrived at the ND border where we were supposed to find the Adams County line, but there was no county sign - only the state border sign. Fortunately, our resident master navigator Larry was able to reference his paper maps and see that if we went off route to head west on US-12 we might pick up the western border of Adams County and that's exactly how that worked out. You can see this on the track photo - its that little left incursion towards Gascoyne on the map.

Presidential Tour - Adams County

 It was now 10:30 AM and we'd ridden 144 miles with essentially no break so we were ready. GPS still showed 40+ miles to nearest food so as we rolled eastward again, we decided to take a chance and get off the route and into the little town or Reeder ND to see if there was anything there. As we headed down into town it did not look promising. But we persisted and after a couple of turns we spotted a Bar/cafe and it appeared to be open so we parked and went in. There were a couple of locals sitting at the bar, one drinking coffee so that was promising. We sat at a table and the bartender came over with menus. It wasn't on the menu but Larry asked for an egg sandwich and we each got a coffee. We chatted with the locals while enjoying the coffees and Larry got a decent sandwich. We spent just about a half hour here before moving on.

After another 25 miles northbound on Hwy 21 - much of it behind a semi hauling pipe, we turned eastward om Hwy 22. Even though Larry had his egg sandwich, I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and lunchtime was approaching with very limited choices ahead. I radioed to Larry that there was a diner listed in the town of Mott ND which was then about 12 miles ahead so we decided to try that. Shortly before the town, I saw Larry's brake lights come on as he veered to the right. I braked also and spotted the problem - it was a hen pheasant that had been in the opposite traffic lane, but when Larry came up on her, she ran towards the right. I don't know how, but she managed to escape undamaged, but not by more than a feather's worth! When we did get into Mott the Pheasant Cafe & Lounge turned out to be a diner on on side and a bar on the other. We did manage to get a reasonable lunch from a fairly limited menu.We were in and out of here in just 30 minutes. That may have been partly due to the fact that it was freezing cold inside. Larry even kept his motorcycle jacket on!

Back on the road, it was more of the same - Fields of hay and now we were starting to also see some corn and even some dairy farms too.

Yet more Hay!

 We were still on Hwy 21 here and this shot looking back showed a nice contrasting field of yellow on one side and green on the other. Not really sure what the fields were but they looked pretty!

Contrasting fields of ???

Eventually we got to our next waypoint - another county line.

Presidential Tour - Grant County

Shorthly after the above photo we were supposed to head north to pick up I-94 into Bismarck, but we decided to stay on 21 eastbound so as to avoid the interstate. We did run into a paving operation with a one lane road restriction but even with the 5 minute wait there we were still happy to skip the interstate. Oh yeah, somewhere along here we crossed back into Central Time thus "losing" an hour.

We arrived in Bismarck at 3:30 PM local time. Still an early day.

Today's Stats: 303.2 miles in 6:47 elapsed time, 5:23 saddle time