#acaNoTier Richardton to New Salem, 51 Miles | Not Always Rainbows and Unicorns

Riding Stats

Accommodations

Route Tracker

After coming off of yesterday’s high and waking up as a guest in Assumption Abbey this morning the day presented as a bit more of a challenge.

Although we only planned for half the mileage, the entire day we rode through headwinds, hills, huge rumble strips on I-94 east and a gnat festival in which we were the main attraction. 🙄

To be honest it wasn’t all that bad, it’s just that it was juxtaposed with the most perfect day yesterday.

After morning Mass at St. Mary’s we had breakfast with Fr. Claude, a retired 93 year old Benedictine monk who was as much entertained by us as we were with him. We could have chatted with him all day.

We packed up, received a blessing from Fr. Odo, and headed toward Taylor. The all-out headwinds started immediately.

Outside of Taylor the moving gnat festival began. Our faces, arms and legs already covered with sunscreen made a cozy resting place for the gnats.

We pushed on to Glen Ullin and were hungry, thirsty and wind beaten. It’s a small town with some nice gas stations and an awesome park but nowhere to eat. It was too hot to get food out of our pack. We just needed prepared food, shade and something cold to drink.

And guess what? Turns out Western Coop Credit Union was having an Open House with baked beans, grilled burgers and brats, lemonade, cookies and chips. They invited us to lunch so we bee lined it to the chow line. Very tasty meal and very nice folks. Now I know why North Dakota is called “legendary”. It’s because their hospitality is indeed legendary.

After lunch and snapping a few pics we headed toward I-94, 12 more miles of all out head wind, rumbles and hills. At one point I had to make the decision between riding over a dead skunk or the rumble. Rumble it was.

Since strong storms are predicted this evening we are staying at an old school motel ($62/night). It’s very clean with an old style room phone and chairs you can sit out front of your room and watch the storms roll in.

We are planning to ride through Bismark tomorrow and it looks like a scenic bike trail goes all through the city. I’m pretty stoked for that!

In case you are wondering about how the camping for cash challenge is going or our total mileage, click here to access our Google sheet.

And oh yes… today is the FIRST day I forgot to do planks and pushups so I guess I need to follow through.

Hoping for some tailwinds tomorrow!! #norumbles

One more bit of info. The purple fields we captured in pics and vids aren’t wildflowers at all but instead, alfalfa. And the yellow fields, canola. Just an FYI. And I saw my first field of corn today. I feel more close to Indiana than ever. ❤️