Friday, June 23, 2000

We did not follow the route of the Adventure Travel Maps today. We did travel 70 miles but we stayed on highway 2 and went to Stanley ND instead of New Town. Tomorrow we will travel to Minot, a distance of only 43 miles. We change our route after talking to a man at a grocery store. He felt that highway 1804 was too dangerous and too hilly. I don’t know about the dangerous part but highway 2 was very hilly. The first 13 miles in the morning were a continuation of the previous day. Up one side of a hill and down the other side of the hill and up and down the next hill, etc. In addition, we were going north, directly into the wind. It was very hard going. After those 13 miles the highway turned directly east and the wind stopped brothering us. However, for several miles we continued to go up and down the hills. It seems that the State of North Dakota does not believe in reducing the height of a hill, they just pave the road in a very straight line over the hills. It seems that the road always goes to the very top of a hill.

The landscape was very similar to the previous days. The crops being grown were mostly hay or wheat. I did see a few fields that had a bright yellow crop that I thought might be canola plants. We went into one valley down a very long hill (that means that we had to climb back out) where the valley was full of a number of small trees or bushes. It was quite a contrast to the rest of the scenery.

We reached Stanley about 5:00 PM. For the last hour we had been looking over our shoulders at a very large and black cloud. We were in the motel room about ½ hour when a thunderstorm dumped upon Stanley. The sky gods missed us today.

FLASHBACK: When we reached Saco MT, my long sleeve bright green T-Shirt was wet with sweat. I hung it on the bicycle to dry. The wind was real strong and the next thing I knew my long sleeved T-Shirt was tangled in the bicycle chain, covered with black chain lube. I spent the next 45 minutes trying unsuccessfully to wash the chain lube out of the T-Shirt. Mary Kay had an identical T-Shirt and the next day between Saco and Wolf Point MT, Mary Kay took her long sleeved T-Shirt off because it was too hot. We do not know what she did with the T-Shirt but we did not have it when we reached Wolf Point. We think that she laid it on the back of the bicycle and it blew off going down a hill. We now have to buy two new shirts whenever we find a store.