It was a chilly night last night that's for sure. Our 0 degree sleeping bags are being put to good use so its not so bad, just the getting up in the morning part that is tricky. We woke up nice and early since we were so excited to ride through the rest of the Badlands. We had some oatmeal and washed our bowls in a sink with nice hot water, which was nice so we didn't have to freeze our fingers washing them outside like normal. There were hardly and cars going through the park for the first half of the ride which was great. It was so peaceful and the scenery was beautiful, I am so glad we decided to ride through the park. There were a couple steep climbs as we were riding through, but nothing harder than we have ridden on before. We made it through the park in about 3 hours and headed towards Wall. The wind was great today; it was still a headwind, but it was not very strong at all so we were very thankful. When we made it to Wall, we went to the "famous" Wall Drug Store to see what the fuss was all about. There were a lot of neat little shops inside and we ended up deciding to eat lunch at the cafe there since we were so hungry. Again, we had cheeseburgers and fries, along with a homemade donut each. I don't know how we end up having cheeseburgers whenever we go out for lunch, but they are always on the lunch menu and they always sound wonderful, and they were. After lunch we filled up on water and then had to do something we never though we would do, ride on the 90. We saw a road labled "service road" next to the 90 right in Wall, but when we took it, it ended up turning the opposite way towards a bunch of housed, guess it wasn't really a service road after all. When we got on the 90 it wasn't as scary as I had imagined it to be. Most of the cars and semi's moved over to the outside lane and we had a large shoulder too. The traffic didn't seem to be going too much faster on the interstate than it had on all of the side roads we had been riding on (where the speed limit was 65- and 75 on the interstate). The I-90 is so much different out here than the thruway back in NY. Nonetheless, I would still never ever want to ride on the 90 in NY, but we aren't aloud to anyway so that's good. The miles went pretty quickly so it didn't seem like we were on the 90 for a long time. There were a couple long climbs, but for the most part the ride was semi-flat. All around the highway it was hilly; we also crossed the Cheyenne river, so it made sense why there weren't other roads that went through that area. We got off the interstate as soon as we could at exit 90. From there we took a road that paralleled the interstate. The road we were on was nice and quiet as there was almost no traffic on it, but it was much hillier than the 90. Every time we came to the top of a hill we could see the black hills off in the distance, it was very pretty. Eventually we made it to New Underwood where we stopped at the little store and picked up some bread and jelly to make pb and jelly sandwiches. There was a little table in the store so we were able to eat inside, which was great since it was starting to get cold again. Its funny how it warms up during the day, but still gets so cold at night. We found a church down the road from the store where we set up camp, rather quickly I might add because by the time we were done with dinner the temperature had dropped even more and it was very chilly. We are only 18 miles from Rapid City so we're pretty excited for tomorrow. We rode 68.48 miles today, another fantastic day!
|
|