Day 43

Side of road
I figured out last night that the path I was supposed to take had absolutely no convenient warm showers hosts along the way for more than a week. I'd be ok with finding a few plugins somewhere to go for a few more days but I will inevidibly need to do it again. I wanted to go north sooner, that way I'd be in North Dakota longer. There was a host along the way but they weren't available. Pretty much my only option was to go a bit south, adding a bit of miles. Also, I would have to go 180 miles tomorrow and the next day- the only other option would be to do 60 miles each day, which would be way too slow. I woke up somewhat early with this in mind. I felt like I had pretty much given up on the whole hide your tent thing. However, this really works well. Just going to the side of the road is easy (I don't have to look for a good spot), convenient (I don't have to peddle a mile down a dirt road to find a secluded spot) and usually pretty safe (the roads are usually surrounded by fences that keep animals out, and they probably don't like being around noisy cars anyways). Keeping the milage goal in mind, I peddled pretty hard for the first few hours. I was going north, and it felt like the wind was still going northwest. I had a great average, until I started going east. I slowed down, but the wind wasn't as bad as it could have been. Nothing really interesting happened until I got to Pierre. I had to go through the beginning of the town by actually riding in the road, because there were no sidewalks or bike paths. When I got to a stoplight, the traffic picked up, so I decided I really needed to figure out what I needed to do next. I pulled to the area that is just a blank space- where a car would end up if it didn't turn. I don't really know how to discribes it, but it's kinda important to my story. Cars were still going by me, so I was still kinda on the road, but I was in a place that no car should go. I looked at google maps for a bit and thought it told me to go straight. As I was looking, I heard the familiar sound of cars colliding. I looked up as a old man in a truck hauling a motorhome hit a small car. It was just a rear end collision and it didn't look like there was a whole lot of damage but still. I decided to get the heck out of there. I crossed the street. Google informed me I was supposed to take a left, and that I was going to go over a pretty wide river. I didn't want to do that with all the traffic. There ended up being a pedestrian path on the side of the bridge, only accessible from the street I had accidentally peddled to. Yippy! It was a neat river- I could see an island not far from the bridge. I filled up on water and food, got disoriented in the streets of the town, and then finally found my way to the highway. I was doing good milage wise by this point. I wouldn't get the 90+ that I was hoping for, but I should get enough for a solid day. On the side of the road, I notice some funny little signs that said west and south, but their respective road numbers. Crap! The opposite direction I was trying to go! I checked Google again but it said I was going the right way- northeast. I think was happened was that trucks were being rerouted because of construction or whatever so they ended up using the opposite roads to get them to the rerouted road. Later signs confirmed I was going te right way. I just find it interesting because oftentimes a road will technically be two roads, and so naturally having a directional delineation is silly because it won't be accurate. But a road that is north, south, east and west definitely takes the cake. There wasn't much for many more miles. The sunset was great- the clouds were just in the right place. I've been thinking that a west bound tour would probably be much better because you'd be biking toward the sunset every night. But then again, you'd have a lot of biking with the sun in your eyes as well. I wake up late enough that the sun is already high enough in the sky to be blocked by my helmet visor. Just when it was getting to be a bit darker than I like, I saw a lone tree up ahead. It ended up being perfect. The grass surrounding it was high enough that I was perfectly hidden. I took one last look at the colorful horizon and then entered my tent. I needed to go 90 miles tomorrow in order to get to Eric's, the next warm showers place. . Realistically that means I should wake up around 6 or 7 at the latest.... But yeah probably not gonna happen.