Day 5 of 29 - Cold and hot

Met some nice people over breakfast and chatted for a while. One of the ladies works as a teacher at the local reservation. Told me a scary and dad story about a little boy who was fishing in a river in the south part of the US and somebody saw the boy behaving strangely as if dizzy. The boy complained the worms were biting him. Turns out the boy thought he was picking up worms to use as bait but they were in fact baby copperhead snakes. Their poison is extremely potent, even more so when they are young. Sadly the boy died about an hour later.

Hmmmm, and I intend to do a lot of camping here.

I still decided to ride on westwards towards North Dakota despite being in the middle of a cold front.

The blue dot on this weather radar is me and the red one was Fargo which lies on the Minnesota / North Dakota border.

Turns out this was not one of my good decisions. Would be better if I stayed in the AmercInn hotel in Fergus Falls. The rain was relentles and the miles just continued with no respite in sight. Needles to say my equipment could have been better - my gloves got completely soaked through and I didn’t think in the morning to put my waterproof trousers on. I had some latex gloves with me and I put them on remembering my motorcycle basic training I had last year in April when the instructor advised the use of washing-up gloves. But I was in a way stuck, couldn’t get a room as it was early in the morning, didn’t want to turn round. Nowhere really to go but to push forward. There were miles of road with no services but then after a veeeery long time along came this cafe that saved my life in a matter of speech. My fingers on my right hand were almost completely numb and only started to get some sensation back into them after warming them on a hot mug of coffee. Also had a very hardy late breakfast that included eggs and stake. There was also a nice addition of peanut butter - I presume it was for the toast, not to spread over the steak. It was all very good :-) After my meal I checked the weather radar again and it was showing I was just on the edge of the storm now. There were only a couple more rainy patches after which I started to see my first signs of sunshine. The sunny bits slowly became longer and more frequent. In the end I could start to take some of thd extra layers off. By the time I arrived in Bismark, the capital of North Dakota the day turned out to be hot and very sunny. My spurits were up again after being down the toilet for most of the day. I stopped at a little recreational area called McDowell Dam - well it just had to be seen and here it is….

Met these two guys in a rest area who were on their way to Montana and they gave me lots of advice and what to see and where to go in Yellowstone. Thanks guys :-)

In fact I don’t know if its because of the bike but everyone is open and wants to chat with you.

At the moments staying in a KOA camp in Bismark. Tomorrow I head off south towards Mount Rushmore and the Crazy horse monument. Need to sleep now. :-)