Gig Harbor Washington to Bar Harbor Maine 2001

Well, thank God. It was a good day. I think I figured out the common link between being cold, hot, lethargic and bitchy - humidity. I've carefully and successfully avoided humidity for the last 20 years. I'm not sure I can overcome it, but at least I know I'm not sick and not necessarily a wimp or a jerk. Of course, a couple of days of headwind didn't help anything.

Even though I had a spare bed, Gridley found the real city park and camped there. He'd had a horrible experience with a hotel bed in Havre and preferred his own. He made a good choice. The bed I slept in was alright, but the other one was awful. He just knows how to work these mid-western cities. It's alien to me.

So anyway, he found his way back to the motel around 8 this morning. I was ready to go. The kids were still asleep so we told them to meet us in Carrington, the day's destination.

It was cool and overcast with a slight tailwind. For once, I got filled up on cereal and a banana so I could skip the time drain of breakfast out. We were cruising well and made McClusky ("The Geographic Center of North Dakota")before lunch. Gridley had been visualizing eggs and pancakes so we pulled into town.

From Montana to Shining Minnesota.

There was a small building wedged between two others that said "cafe". We went in and discovered that it was really part of the bar next door. They were happy to comply with Mike's breakfast request. (Even though there appeared to be a shortage of eggs in town. As Mike noted, "They were scrambling for eggs.") I chose the special - swedish meatballs on noodles. It came with green beans! A real vegetable! We considered the orange pie for dessert, but it was really some sort of jello concoction, so we opted for rhubarb kuchen. The very german looking girl waiting on us corrected our pronunciation of "coogan" and served us something that looked like flan, but dense with a very subtle flavor (not quite tasteless).

The apparent owner came in as we were leaving and, as soon as she found out about our bike ride, ran off to get a reporter for the local paper. We got our picture taken and bragged about our 165 mile day.

We're famous in McClusky!

We were feeling wonderful about our McClusky experience and headed off looking for more. Towns were few and far between. About 3:00 I started craving a big soft-serve ice cream and behold, there was the Hurdfield Dairy King. We went from near-boiling to brain-freeze in short order. We also got some good advice about routes around Lake Michigan from another helpful Nort Dakodan.

A sign at the only rest stop we've seen for days told about the geologic formation of the area. Ice sheets covered the place, maybe ground it flat, and occasionally gouged out divots, or left ice pockets that are now little pothole lakes. Our road went by or through dozens of these lakes. The water was often a foot or less below road level. In a couple of places they'd recently had to dump dirt and gravel on the road to raise it above the water. They've had a lot of rain. There wasn't a great deal of life obvious on the lakes, but there were some weird birds. Some odd looking cranes or egrets and something that looked like a cross between a swan and a pelican.

The peliswans flew off.

We hammered on with our tailwind and made the 100 miles to Carrington by about 5:30. We found a city park with an official campground and a pool with showers. We showered and planned to come back for a late swim, but some kid puked in the pool and they closed early.

A lady with a bike was camping near us. She was from the Netherlands and had ridden from Halifax, Nova Scotia. She had her tent set up, but she must be travelling light. All I saw was a beater dirt bike. We talked touring. She's on her way to Missoula for the reunion of the 1976 Bikecentennial ride across America, which she also rode. She took 2 years for another ride from the Netherlands to Cape Horn and on across Australia. Serious touring.

We left her cooking some meager meal on her tiny camp stove and headed off for steaks at a motel restaurant. Serious touring.

The kids showed up about 8. They'd had a good day, too. Garcia only broke one spoke. They made most of the same stops we did.

The baseball games are over. The beer drinking stragglers have gone home. If they'd just quit firing bottle rockets, I'd get rested up for another big day tomorrow.