4. Dickinson, ND to Fargo, ND

Day 32. Enderlin to Glyndon, MN, 80 miles

I AM IN MINNESOTA!!

Today I made it through North Dakota, which I feel like I’ve been running from since I arrived. It’s been a hard state to ride a bike through—just like the first time—and while I have much love for it, I am glad to be out of the plains.

I was initially aiming for Fargo today, but I got out of the motel at 6 and the riding was beautiful, and by 20 or so miles in I’d decided to make a break for Minnesota.

It is an indescribable feeling to ride a flat and empty county road just after sunrise, to have the whole countryside to yourself and to be smelling it and hearing it and rolling through it without the wind whistling in your ears; it’s one of the things bike tour is for. I was elated.

A couple of people had told me the land flattened out after Jamestown, but Jamestown isn’t on my route—it’s north of me—so I’d tucked that bit of intel away and forgotten about it. Then, late in my ride yesterday, I saw a sign for the Jamestown junction, and soon after the landscape indeed smoothed out. Today was remarkably flat—under 600 feet of climbing—which, paired with the wind starting to turn in my favor, made for faster riding than I’ve done in quite some time.

I knew there was a storm coming (sound familiar?), but all there was to do was ride. I’m off the ACA route through the Midwest as of Fargo, so I was using paper and Google maps to make my way. Googlemaps can be idiosyncratic, though, and by the second gravel road it put me on—which I raced through hoping to be off it before the rain arrived and turned it to mud—I’d decided to do some of my own decision making. I’ll have to see if I like this method or want to use RideWithGPS to map out the route ahead of time and then load it into my device. Problem is I don’t much trust RWGPS either—at one point in Issaquah it routed me down a mountain bike trail, all “Bikes are bikes! Crush it on dirt!”

Early in the day I saw this churchlet from the road, with a little cemetery next door, but something about the building seemed off and made me do a double take. When I stopped to take a closer look, I realized it was a fake, a dummy building presumably there to anchor the small cemetery that remained on the land.

I’ve started seeing more cemeteries in the last couple of days; I saw so few in Washington and Montana that I wondered where they put their dead. In the south Joyce and I had seen a lot more family plots on residential land, and I wondered if that was the case out west. Anyone know?

In any case, I’m seeing more now, and it was the purest and most unbelievable luck that right as the storm hit I happened on a cemetery that was encircled by trees. Trees are hard to come by in the plains, and when you see them they usually signify private property within their bounds. Cemeteries are the sometimes exception, making them a desirable rest spot; I’d stopped in one for a break outside Napoleon, only to realize it was set up for a burial and likely not the best hangout spot.

This one was totally deserted, with no church nearby, and I made my way in and under the perfect hiding tree right as the rain hit. It was magical. The tree had a wonderful canopy with a convenient entrance, and I leaned my bike against it and stood behind the tree as the sky turned completely dark and the worst of the rain lashed the trees and lightning and thunder did their business. After 15 minutes or so, I saw the light reappear behind me as the sound of thunder moved off, and soon it slowed to a drizzle, and then it was just damp. I walked through the cemetery reading the headstones of my benefactors: lots of Hoffmann, Freitags, and Walburgs.

Then I rode some more. After miles of eastern North Dakota nothingness, I wended my way through the ugly exurbs of Fargo, the biggest city I’ve encountered on bike tour at 125k people. It was muggy and the scenery unattractive—West Fargo, Riverside industrial wasteland—but I could feel Minnesota on the other side, and my mood was solid. I put a Subway in Moorhead, MN into Googlemaps and aimed myself toward it. And one veggie 6-inch (WITH AVOCADO!) later I was in Minnesota.

I made my way to the Buffalo River State Park, where I chatted with a lovely ranger named Sara and stood around cooling my feet in the river for which the park is named.

Thrilled to be back in the Midwest, I ate two hard boiled eggs, a cheese bar, and an apple for dinner and watched the ground squirrels frolic until it got dark(ish), then headed to bed content.

Day 31. Gackle to Enderlin, 74 miles

Well I don’t even know what to say about today. I arrived in Enderlin at noon, having ridden my full 74 miles—there’s nothing between Gackle and Enderlin—in two stints of 32 and 42.

It didn’t start out seeming like that kind of day. I knew a stiff crosswind was the order of the day and that it would be hot and shadeless. ND, man. I slept badly, with anxiety dreams about leaving too late and not getting there, waking every hour. Since I was sleeping inside, I’d packed fully last night, and I was up at 4:45 and on the road before 5:30. I bid a casual farewell to Lisa and Rick, who were up and making breakfast, assuming we’d leapfrog each other on the road throughout the day.

Gackle was lovely at sunrise.

I’m learning, to my surprise, how much I love riding at and just after sunrise. I don’t love the feeling of needing to in order to beat the wind, but I love the cool and the quiet and the morning palette. It was Sunday at 5:30 a.m., and it was all empty roads, soft green hills, and gleaming sloughs.

The riding was lovely. The wind was already up, but not strong, and a crosswind rather than a direct headwind. I had been granted large mercies by the people of ND, and I accepted humbly and gratefully the small mercies of the land. Also, as Joyce acknowledged almost immediately after making the statement in eastern ND nine years ago, it is not true that crosswinds are as bad as headwinds.

I took my first break at 32 miles—why not ride while it felt good? I figured I’d stop for lunch after another 20, since it was barely 8:30.

More sloughs, more rolling, though I was definitely descending now. Both my mphs and the device told me that. I was moving between 1450 and 1350 feet, rather than the 1600-2k I’d been at for quite a while. And indeed sometime in the course of the day I hit a sign for the Continental Divide at 1420 feet.

I didn’t stop for a picture, and I’m fairly sure this is why.

after much vacillating, I let myself get the phone out of the ziploc for this one photo and video

I knew a thunderstorm was coming, had seen it on the radar, and at some point late morning it arrived, traveling on an insane tailwind that had me moving 19-28 mph, and at one point I hit 38. Now I know the device was lying when it said I did 40 before, because 38 was wild.

At first I thought I could outrace the storm, but hahaha. The tailwind, the storm, the joy of riding kept me going through the rain hitting (pause to put on rain jacket, don’t worry about shoes because I’m at a motel and can dry them); through the only major hill of day, a doozy and in the rain; through the end of the storm and the following muggy heat and disappearance of the tailwind, until there were only 16 miles to Enderlin at 10:30 or so.

I didn’t remember whether Enderlin was a real place, a place I could spend an afternoon waiting to be able to check in; I think Joyce and I arrived in the evening and had to make do for dinner with frozen microwave pizza from the motel. Or maybe candy? So I took it real slow in the heat, arriving at noon to find the Enderlin Inn looking pretty much the same as my memory of it.

The motel clerk was amused by my wish to make a reservation and told me I could just check in, for which I was quite grateful. And so I was installed in my motel room just after noon, with the whole day ahead of me. Figuring I’d just sweat more going into town for lunch and provisions, I decided to delay the shower and headed back out.

Enderlin is not charming.

City Hall, the only remaining older building I found in town

how you know when a pump is out of order

After a mediocre BLT and fries, I made the rounds for supplies and headed back to the motel for a shower.

It was hot as heck, and I was feeling the effects of my lousy night’s sleep and active morning, so I turned on the AC and drowsed/dozed for a while. Later I spent some time mapping out Minnesota, where I aimed to land tomorrow, and then, after packing up, I hit the hay.

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.

Day 29, Bismarck to Hazelton, 53ish miles

I woke up early to head out ahead of the wind, and was greeted with this beautiful sunrise from the patio.

As I was quietly gathering my things and packing up, it started to rain. A storm system had popped up overnight (why does it seem like the only thing the forecast ever gets right is headwind?), and it was going to be wet for several hours.

Bummed, but buoyed by my time with Kathy, I decided to brave the relatively light rain and head out anyway. I had a yogurt and woke Kathy (not on purpose!), who fed me more watermelon and coffee. I had half-packed my bike before thinking to give it a once-over. Uh-oh (expletive, actually). Flat tire AGAIN. Clearly I hadn’t found the source of the puncture, and overnight the tire had lost all its air. Frustrated, I settled down in the garage to take another go at finding the culprit. I could see the puncture on the patch, but I still couldn’t locate any wire. After extracting another small piece of glass, I put in a new tire and headed out into the rainy Bismarck rush hour.

so full of cautious and misplaced optimism!

Can anyone guess what happened next? Six rainy miles later, I checked my tire and found it losing air again. Reader, what did I do? I called the heroic Kathy, of course. She made herself late for an appointment driving out out to pick me up and drop me at a local bike shop, and I don’t know what kindness I can do in the world that will ever match her, but I aim to do my best.

At the bike shop, the mechanic took the tire off, cleaned it, and told me it looked small enough to maybe be abrasion from some dirt in the tire. I said I was pretty sure it was wire, and he did another thorough inspection and couldn’t find anything, until, leaning over his shoulder like an obnoxious stage mother, I spotted a telltale gleam. “What’s that?”, I asked. He poked and tweezed and pulled out … you guessed it: a piece of wire. We were both pretty sure this was the cause, but I was facing a couple hundred miles with few gas stations, let alone bike shops. After a bit of dithering I decided to buy a new tire and take the old one, which I’d just purchased pre-tour, with me to send home with Andrew when I saw him. Jared installed the new tire, and I was on my way at 12:30, the rain having cleared in the meantime.

view, with headwind

What can I tell you? The day was mostly east, with a few southerly stretches, including the last 10 or so miles. As an apprentice disciple of delayed gratification, I strongly prefer to get the hard out of the way first and finish with the easier. I swear that promised stretch of tail- and crosswind as opposed to head- and crosswind, paired with Kathy’s good mojo kept me going the whole day. The new tire did its job (so much for my competence!), the wind was mostly in my face, and I arrived in Hazelton for the evening with the rain, making it to the picnic shelter before my shoes got soaked through. Hazelton has a posh public park with cheap camping, including hot showers and an array of shelters. I hung out in a picnic pavilion eating snacks and waiting for the rain to pass. After a shower and dinner, the rain had stopped enough for me to set up the tent. With my objects all charging in the swank shelter, I settled in for the night and passed out immediately.

Day 28. New Salem to Bismarck, 38 miles

Today was an A+. I woke up refreshed and ready to tackle my tire. Allan had told me I was welcome to hang out on their adorable patio in the morning, and I took advantage to spread myself out and attend to finding the cause of my flat.

I know this type of flat: it’s radial wire or whatever it is that some tires shed, and I’d almost certainly gotten it on I-94. Expedience indeed. Today I was taking the scenic route instead, hills be damned. Kevin had recommended it “if you like that sort of thing,” which I do.

I didn’t find any wire, but after spelunking with a safety pin I pulled out a small chunk of glass that had to be it and, wary of using all my spare tubes, patched it and hoped for the best. I stopped at Tellman’s, the grocery store, on the way out of town to stock up and thank the proprietor and his wife again for their kindness. While there, I ran into another eastbound cyclist named Todd; he was moving much faster than I and soon passed me after stopping himself at the store.

I had enjoyed Kathy’s company so much and suffered the results of overreach the day before, so I texted her in the morning to see if I could see her in Bismarck and maybe stay with her, and she responded immediately and enthusiastically ❤️ Knowing I had a short day, I took my time doing my 30+ miles, stopping wherever and periodically checking my tire to see if it was holding, hardly daring to hope. And it was!

I felt incredible: competent, capable, and confident. This is hard as heck, but I was Doing It.

I kept expecting to recognize something, since Joyce and I had ridden this exact route nine years ago, but nothing was looking familiar until I got to Mandan, a suburb of Bismarck, and saw this chicken, a little worse for the wear since my photo of Joyce with it in 2013.

Mandan also featured a bike path! Such a joy to see, always, however janky the maintenance.

I crossed the Missouri again entering Bismarck. Bismarck had a lovely riverfront trail with shaded benches, and I had a sit to plan my city time.

I stopped in the city and did city things: late lunch at Subway, CVS for sunscreen, a bike shop for a new spare tube. Then I headed to Kathy and Kevin’s place, where once again Kathy and I immediately set to chatting like we had things to catch up on. We hung out for a bit talking, and she gave me a tour of their house, which she painted herself. (Did I mention her second career as an interior painter?)

Kathy took me to dinner at a local brewery and restaurant, and we got to know each other better, and she remained an utter delight to me. Such a warm, funny, interesting human. Then she gave me a tour of Bismarck, including the historic downtown and the lookout/necking spot.

We headed back to the house and talked some more and watched the weather report and called Kevin on speakerphone. He patiently answered my questions about ND once again, including the one about the I-94 exits to nowhere. Turns out when they put in the interstate it bisected existing agricultural holdings; to avoid making landowners travel 20 miles out of the way to cross the interstate to the other side of their property, they added exits to allow access. Aha!

I enjoyed the excellent company of dear Yogi and admired Kathy’s rose bush, which came from her mother.

Clean and happy of heart, I went to bed far past my bedtime as Kathy ran a load of laundry she insisted she was doing anyway with my day’s riding clothes. What have I ever done to deserve such kindness?

Day 27. Medora to New Salem, 98 miles (of which I rode 57)

Today was a wild ride of a day. The following is a long story with no pictures and no conversations, so feel free to skip it if that’s not your jams, Alice. It’s a story about the difficulty of riding my bike through North Dakota and the incredible kindness and generosity of strangers who have made it possible so far.

The day dawned bright and clear. Haha no it didn’t. My planned early departure was foiled by the rain starting at 3:30. I woke to it pattering on my tent, and it continued for a few hours. When there was a break around 6:30, I took the opportunity to get myself packed up, breaking down the tent last so I had a place to shelter if it started up again and because it was just going to get stuffed in a plastic bag (three separate ones, actually) and bungeed on my panniers. As Joyce would say, not an Ortlieb model day.

Feeling my rest day mood deflating over the wet tent and headwinds, I finished packing up around 7:45, and as I was about to head out it started pouring. I rode to the showerhouse and huddled under the eaves miserably looking at the weather, texting with Andrew for radar reports since I didn’t have enough service, and revising my miles for the day downward from my planned 65 to 40 miles to Dickinson.

I obviously looked as dejected as I felt, and when the park ranger (manager, as it turned out) rolled up in his pickup and asked in the kindest voice how I was doing, well, um, tears.

He offered to give me a cup of coffee and asked where I was going today; I explained my plan, and he told me he had to drive to Dickinson around noon to get gas anyway (true? I may never know), and if he did would I like a ride? I was feeling pretty desperate to keep on track to meet Andrew in Michigan in less than two weeks, and without the briefest hesitation I said yes. Andrew had texted that the storm cloud was supposed to pass in an hour or so, and I figured maybe I could ride on from Dickinson if the going was good.

Kevin, my knight in a shining white pickup truck, drove me to his park cabin and on the way called his wife to tell her he was bringing a pathetic cyclist for coffee and shelter (my paraphrase). What can I tell you? We got to the adorable cabin, and Kathy took me in and gave me coffee (with fancy creamer!) and warm cinnamon bread and melon, and we were talking like old friends within minutes. I hung out with her as Kevin came and went taking care of business, and she showed me some of their collection of western paintings and had her incredibly adorable and smart dog Yogi perform his repertoire of tricks (he smiles!).

The rain had cleared by 10/10:30, and I was feeling a little dumb, but I still had a stiff headwind and wanted to make the miles, so I waited on the ride. We headed back to the park office, where Kevin and I talked art and North Dakota, mostly me asking questions and getting to learn from a guy who clearly knows and loves the subjects. I learned about sloughs, at last! He said they are due to the way glaciation worked in ND; it left big, clay-bottomed low points, but nothing flows into or out of them—they never get full enough to flow. The clay keeps the water there, and they’re great for fishing, but they are closed systems. Slough is local terminology.

We also talked about the fracking in the Bakkan, and he told me it’s not that the boom is over. The technology has gotten better as they’ve learned, and they’re able to re-frack existing wells a second and maybe third time. This factor combined with the limit on drill permits has cut the number of wells from 300 to 35 (hope I got those numbers right), but they’re producing more oil than 10 years ago. The maintenance also requires fewer workers, so the rough traffic has died down as the number of temporary jobs has fallen.

Kathy headed back to Bismarck, where they live, with an invitation to stay with them if the miles worked out. I got out my tent and set it out in the already-blazing sun to dry.

By the time Kevin finished his rounds, it was dry, and we loaded up my bike and left for Dickinson. It was a great ride, with terrific conversation and that same sense of having just met a friend—warm, comfortable, easy. I wanted to ask him every question I ever had about ND; dude knows A LOT.

He dropped me on the far side of Dickinson around 12:30 with the same invitation Kathy had extended, and I got myself on I-94 due east with the goal of hitting Hebron, 37 miles away.

The riding was WONDERFUL. Not the road—I-94 was loud and busy for ND. But there was no whistle of wind in my ears, no fierce resistance at every pedal stroke. I decided to stay on I-94 for expedience; it wasn’t the most pleasant, but had the same wide, clean shoulders consistently (put a pin in that thought) because it’s an interstate.

The lull in wind on the way to Medora had felt like relief. This was more akin to joy. Maybe there was a crosswind, maybe a mild headwind? I couldn’t tell, and why look a gift horse in the mouth? My mood, as I told Andrew, was tailwind, for the first time in days. Kathy and Kevin did that.

The mile markers sailed by unnoticed, as I passed exits that didn’t seem to go anywhere, that were just ramps and an overpass to the other side (shade opportunity!); I wondered what had been there and why there were exits. Spoiler alert: Kev answers this one too.

After 22 miles, I decided to take a quick break at a closed exit to eat and assess my plans. I was feeling great and digging riding, and Hebron was just 15 miles away. New Salem, which featured both a campground and a motel, was another 20 or so. There was absolutely nothing between them. I decided to ride while the riding was good and get my butt to New Salem. I called the motel to check about rooms and left a message, then moved on. If you’re sensing hubris and meaningful adumbration here, you’re onto something.

The landscape continued to be consistently hilly—the rolling plains, is how one local described it. Though I am still mostly descending more than ascending, there’s a lot of climbing to 2k+ feet to descend to 1600 and the like. You have to go up to go down? One thing I love about riding the country this way is I get an intimate sense of its topography. (It’s also one of the things I don’t love sometimes!)

I knew I was going to arrive on the late end, around 7/7:30, but either option had showers, and it would still be daylight until 9. And then, about 22 miles out from New Salem I began feeling a wobble and a fishtail. Yep. YEP.

I had a slow leak, and my tire was very low though not flat. Setting myself up to fix it—not so quick when my flat kit is arrogantly buried at the bottom of my pannier—I suddenly noticed that I’d made it to Central Time, and by the time I was done fixing the flat and failing to field-diagnose the cause it was 5:40. I knew that it was going to start leaking again since I hadn’t fixed the cause, but I figured I could hand fill it every few miles until New Salem and deal with it there. I also finally heard back from the motel lady, who responded to my text (desperation move) to let me know she had no rooms. Cyclists beware: look at the Yelp reviews and heed my experience and later intel; the Arrowhead Motel is not a reliable bet.

Indeed just a few rolling miles later I had to stop to put in air, and at a rest area 11 miles out from New Salem where I stopped for another refill I turned in earnest to the sleep problem. The campground’s online reservation system said it was full, which seemed crazy for a Tuesday. I called the RV park in town, but they had no bathroom facilities. Fay, the lady I was talking to, suggested the campground, and I told her I’d tried it and the motel, and both were full. My voice was almost certainly trembly by this point, and she seemed sympathetic, but as I said to her, it wasn’t her problem and thank you. She had to go, but said she’d call me back, that we’d come up with something. I briefly considered and abandoned the idea of camping at the rest stop (which did not permit overnight camping) and moved on toward New Salem with no idea where I was going to sleep.

As I continued my late and sad grind toward New Salem, Fay called me back. She asked if I’d had any success, and I said no, I’d tried the one coffee shop she said had a room, but they were closed. She said she was on her way in from Bismarck, where she lived, and I should call her if they truly didn’t have anything at the campground.

Fast forward: I limped into town around 8:15. The campground had empty spots, but an unfriendly-seeming dude told me they’d all been reserved for what turned out to be the enormous annual ND Country Music Fest, taking place in New Salem 7/6-7/9. In despair, I called Fay, who said she was still 10 miles out—the point at which I realized she was driving in from Bismarck for me—and to wait for her there because she didn’t want me wandering around town.

Fay came to the campground and delivered me into the hands of my third/fourth ND angel, Allan, a retired dairy farmer who opened a grocery store in town on his retirement; he drove up as we were talking, responding to her call. He had a room above his garage—as it turned out, one with laundry, a full kitchen, soft beds, and a beautiful shower. Fay drove the mile to his house ahead of me to make sure I got there safely and then took off, and he showed me the place and told me to make myself at home and, at my inquiry, said to pay what I thought fair. I was, as you can imagine, overcome with gratitude and disbelief at my good fortune. I showered and put in laundry, made a dinner of spaghetti-Os (👎🏻), drank two bottles of water, and crashed the heck out.