Day 4 July 1, 2003

The Dakota’s

We actually got started at 8 am this morning and it was a good thing because we had 400 miles to travel. There are not too many towns out here that are big enough to have motels in them, so you need to make it to the place you are going or camp out. We were close to schedule all day, but still got here an hour late. The construction in this part of the country in unbelievable. I was told by one of the locals that they have two seasons up here. The first is winter, and the other is road construction.

We stopped for breakfast at a little place in Wibaux called The Palace Hotel Café. It was kind of old in a very small town, but the breakfast was as good as any first rate restaurant in big city, and the coffee was better. Shortly after breakfast we crossed into North Dakota. Karen seemed to like this state or at least the need to get through it because I had trouble keeping up with her. The bikes are running great and it almost seemed like they just wanted to open up and run. This state seems a lot like Montana, except there seems to be a lot more water, ponds and mini lakes all over the place. The sky looks about the same size as it did in Montana, but it doesn’t give you that BIG SKY feeling that we left behind. Maybe it the clouds or something. We crossed the Little Missouri River and rode on to Bismarck. We passed many interesting signs on the road including a cow that you could see on top of a little mound from more than a mile away. It represented the largest Holstein in the world. As we crossed over the Missouri river, we managed to get short look at Bismarck itself before stopping at The Little Cottage for lunch. We had a light but delicious lunch and then back on the road again. A lot of water, a few small towns, lots of road construction, and a lot of billboards later, we stopped for gas at Jamestown. We picked up a few needed items at the local Wall Mart before heading south. More construction new oil and loose gravel for about 40 miles, then we finally crossed the boarder into South Dakota. A few more miles put us into the town of Aberdeen. We decided to get gas before checking in and found that to our amazement, the gas pumps had television sets built into them. They only play as long as you are pumping though. What next?

Well we’ve checked in now and I find that my Nextel still is not able to get any reception, but my Verizon is working fine. I have not been able to get a signal on my Nextel all day. It may work from coast to coast, but apparently not up here. Well I guess that is about it for today. We are going to make it a short travel day tomorrow because it is our 31^st anniversary. We plan to stop in Sioux Falls for the night and cross into Minnesota on Thursday. So until then, I’ll see you on the byways………