Last night we camped at a KOA in Mitchell, SD. The mosquitoes weren't too bad after we sprayed ourselves, but as the sun set the gnats teamed up with them and broke through our defenses. We retreated to our tents, and discovered everything was wet. You see, the forecast did not call for rain so we left off the rainfly. However, the dewpoint was so high that as it cooled the moisture in the air condensed on everything - including our tents, and anything toiching the tents got wet. Grrrr.
This was to be my first night on a new mattress and it went very well. In the past i had used an inflatable mattress which is good for 2-5 nights before the seams leak. Now i have an Exped Synmat with built in pump. The goal is to get a better mattress, one which i would be comfy on as a side-sleeper, and also eliminate the need to find a Walmart a couple times a week. As a bonus, i no longer need to bring a pump, and this also opens the possibilities of overnight backpacking trips.
Morning brought sunshine, bigger mosquitoes, and such extreme humidity that there was no chance of drying out. We made some coffee and oatmeal, packed and hit the road.
And it was a foggy road. After half an hour the fog burned off and we were treated to Wall Drug signs. We laughed at the '24 Hour Toe Service' consistently misspelled on several signs. We got gas. We saw a camel near the 1880's town (there has to be cameltoe joke in there but i can't find it). It reached 97 degrees, but we had escaped the midwest and it's humidity so it wasn't too bad.
We also passed two eastbound cyclists, one in a red shirt another in yellow. The Bishops? Nah, can't be, they're supposed to be on the highline in North Dakota.
In Rapid City we found lunch at the Firehouse brewpub. The three of us shared two samplers - the wheat was like a refreshing kolsch, their red and the stout were excellent. The rest of the brews were good, as was the food. We weren't done riding for the day, so limited ourselves to the samplers and moved on.
The next interesting bit was spearfish canyon, a 20 mile stretch of smooth asphalt which gently meandered between 500 foot cliffs. Thereafter our planned route turned to gravel, but envisioning 20 miles of gravel at slow speeds at 97f prompted us to retrace our tracks back to I-90 and on to Devil's Tower.
As hwy 14 lead us towards the tower we spied ominous clouds and got a little wet. From the tower to Moorcraft we rode right under that cloud and got pelted with sideways rain. Considering the heat, it felt good.
Our goal for the night was to reach Sheridan but first we had to get to Gillette. To do so we had to go west, and to the west was a large thunderhead zapping the ridges on each side of the interstate. Lacking protective Faraday cages like the cars around us, I led our little group towards the storm like the stubborn Norwegian I am. It started to rain so I zipped up the Aerostich. We passed two motorcyclists under an overpass and dismissed them as wimps. The lightning was impressive, less than a mile away, less than ten seconds between each strike. The rain and wind got harder, I dismissed the next group of bikers huddled under an overpass as lacking proper raingear.
But what we needed was hailgear. As the dime-sized hail fell at terminal velocity we raced into it at 80mph. Figuring I could decrease the impact pain by slowing down, I slowed down and desparately looked for an underpass to cower beneath. And found none. Fotunately the ordeal lasted mere minutes.
The remainder of the ride to Sheridan was uneventful, including a beer run then culminating with an MRE (beef patty) and an ice cream social at the KOA. Paul and I compared welts from the hail, and our dewey tents were dry within minutes.
The storm has passed, the thunder and lightning producing little more than high winds and rain.
Tomorrow we enter the Rocky Mountains!
No comments:
Post a Comment