July 3 Day 3

The plan for today, is to get across Minnesota and a big chunk of North Dakota, ending the day in Dickinson ND. The weather forecast is calling for a dry, hot, humid day. We grabbed a bite of breakfast, loaded the bike and trailer, and hit the road around 9:00 am.

This was a little later than we planned, due to an unforeseen trailer tire issue. Yesterday evening, when we arrived at the hotel, I checked the tires on the trailer and noticed they were wearing poorly. The outside edges were getting very worn, while the center strip looked like brand new, a sure sign of under inflation. The plan was to hit a gas station first thing this morning and increase the air pressure. Well, as we loaded the bike this morning, I remembered that I actually carry a small 12 volt air compressor on board the bike for just this reason. So, no need to hunt for a gas station with air, I just dug around in my saddle bag, located the compressor, aired up, and we were on our way. I'll keep an eye on the trailer tires to see if the wear evens out.

The ride through Minnesota was pretty much as expected, less corn than yesterday, and more dairy farms. We passed through the St. Cloud area and headed toward Fargo ND.

Here is a shot of the ND welcome sign (someone thinks ND is Legendary??)

The only thing I saw that was legendary, was the amount of truck traffic! Although normal auto traffic was pretty light, there was a seemingly large amount of tractor trailer traffic.

They seemed to be transporting just about anything you could imagine. Here is one with some unidentifiable machinery parts.

Huge coils of flexible pipe on another...

Even some new boats looking for a home.

These trucks were interesting. Can you guess what they are transporting?

They are parts of a large wind turbine. What was interesting, was that the tube portions were used as actual stressed members of the trailer, actually becoming the trailer itself. Notice how they hooked some framework with wheels on each end of the tube to form the trailer? The items to the far right are the blades.

A few miles down the road we passed a wind-farm where some of these turbines were in use. They were spinning pretty good too, as we were fighting a ridiculous head wind through most of North Dakota. Our fuel economy took a dump with the wind as well :(

Many of you may remember hearing about Minot ND in the news recently. They have had horrible flooding of the Souris River in that area, and have had to evacuate thousands of homes. Some flooding has also effected areas to the south of Minot, like Bismark ND. Below are some shots of flooded fields along route 94 between Bismark and Dickinson. The areas on both sides of the roadway are flooded.

You can see below, that the water was once over the roadway.

Some inflatable tubes were placed along the berms to keep the water from flowing across the road.

More inflatable tubes doing their job.

Since traffic was light, and the tubes were staunchly holding their ground, we had no delay passing through the area.

Below is another one of Lennie's boredom shots. She commented that this was a photo of our Amish GPS. The hood is actually to keep the sun from glaring on the screen.

As we neared our destination of Dickinson, we noticed this, along the highway. No indication of what it is, but you can get an idea of scale by looking at the picnic shelter next to the sculpture. It looks like a huge metal version of one of those dream catchers ??

Here we are, the end of the day is near. Our plan was to spend the night here, on behalf of Pat and Ronnie (a little inside family humor).

One more interesting tidbit. The hotels in this western area of North Dakota are completely booked, and the rates are ridiculous, considering you are pretty much in the middle of "no-wheres-ville." Anybody guess why?

Well, there is a huge amount of oil drilling going on in western ND (more info about the Bakken Shale oil fields can be found here). So much in fact, that the area is flooded with out of town oil workers who live here temporarily while they work. Since the oil drilling companies are covering the lodging costs, the hotels are really "sticking it to ya" with the prices, that is, if you can find a room at all. Luckily we had booked our room back in February.

Matter of fact, as we were unloading the bike after checking in, a group of bikers stopped in without a reservation. They had just spent the entire day riding, only to end their day in a town with NO rooms available. The desk clerk tried to help by contacting the other local hotels, but there were indeed, no rooms to be had. Even worse, the desk clerk indicated that to the east (the direction they were heading), they were likely to find no rooms for a few hundred miles, since the Minot flood victims who had to evacuate, had taken up temporary lodging in that area.

Tomorrow, we will take a quick ride through Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and then head over to Great Falls Montana. This will put us in a position to hit Glacier National Park on Tuesday.

For today, we covered 530 miles, bringing our trip total to 1347. It took us about 11 hours, including gas and food stops to get to Dickinson. Below is a map of our route from today.