Day 30. Hazelton to Gackle, 66 miles

It didn’t rain overnight! Or in the morning! I woke to a dry tent and a cool morning. Though I was up at 5, it’s slower getting out of a campground than a motel, and I wasn’t on the road until 6:30. The wind was up but still pretty mild, and I settled into a day of challenging but not miserable riding for the 65 miles to Gackle.

The land rolled, as it does in North Dakota; I’m constantly going up and down without losing or gaining any significant elevation—my ascent and descent totals today (however accurate those are) were nearly identical, and Gackle is at 1940 feet, just 150 lower than Glasgow, MT.

The wind picked up, but then dropped again to tolerable levels, and mostly I just rode. At breaks I sat with my legs under the shade of my lying-down bike (the mile markers in ND aren’t tall enough to lean a bike on) and drank as much water as I could handle. Ladies and gentlemen, I schvitzed in a most unladylike manner.

Sloughs abounded. The unusually rainy season has left them high, and it was almost like having lakes as I followed roads that bisected enormous sloughs, teeming with waterfowl and the NYC pigeons of the countryside, red-winged blackbirds. When I moved too slowly through their territory, they chattered and yawped as they circled overhead until I was clear of it. Rude buggers.

I had been wondering if the house half sunken in a slough that Joyce and I had marveled at would still be there, and indeed it was, if a few feet lower.

The landscape was green and undulating and punctuated regularly with farms and hay rolls and grain storage facilities.

I snacked as recommended from what Napoleon (the only town between Hazelton and Gackle) had to offer:

I made it to Gackle—where Joyce and I had stayed in 2013 at the height of our despair about the rideability of ND—around 3:30. It felt wholly familiar, which was an odd sensation; I have strong memories of the place. I headed to the Honey Hub, a cyclist-only hostel run by beekeepers who make Honey Stinger snacks, which had just opened in 2013 to respond to ACA’s reroute of the Northern Tier because of the Williston oil traffic. It is now, nine years later, a well-established stop on the Northern Tier, the only one between Napoleon and Enderlin, a little over 100 miles.

As I’d been sitting roadside on a break, a cyclist couple—Lisa and Rick—happened upon me. They’re doing a fun mash-up of the Lewis & Clark Trail, the Pacific Crest, and the Northern Tier and had ridden a bit with Todd, the guy I ran into in New Salem. We chatted for a few minutes and then they headed on to Gackle. When I arrived at the Honey Hub, they were relaxing in the yard and let me know they planned to pitch their tent there, leaving me the bunkhouse; I was happy with this arrangement because it would allow faster egress in the morning. North Dakota has narrowed my focus to the purely functional.

I went off for a walk while they showered then showered myself and headed into town for dinner at either the Tastee-Freez or the bar, Dani’s Place, which is under new management and now offers dinner every night, rather than just the nights Tastee-Freez is closed.

Cute as Tastee-Freez is, I decided I wanted a beer with my burger and settled in at Dani’s Place for a lovely and somewhat nostalgic evening; I’m not sure I ever expected to be back at the bar in Gackle, ND, pop. 273.

The owner chatted with me for a while; she’s from California, like a number of plains folks I’ve met, and we bonded over the kindness of North Dakotans. Feeling full, both of stomach and heart, I wandered back to the Honey Hub and readied myself for an early departure.