40 miles.  Not bad for a rest day!

First, I’ll remind you to take another look at yesterday’s revised posting. Now that we’re in the sphere of reasonably good wi fi I have updated that day with photos etc.

Now to today. Late yesterday, after looking at the predicted winds, we decided to forego our rest day and take advantage of the westerly breezes to help us at least part way on our trek.  We have some things being shipped to us in Dickinson at the PO so we went ahead and packed up to ride. The first rude awakening was that we had two flat tires … one each.  I replaced Maja’s then started on mine. In the process of searching for the offending needle like piece of metal in my tire, I was shocked to find that the tread on my rear tire was worn almost all the way through revealing the bias ply just covering the tube!

Early morning bike repair

Very fortunately, Medora has an “awesome” bike shop and, hallelujah, they were open on Sunday morning! Just over 100$ later I had two new tires and two new tubes.  The woman at the shop, Jennifer – who, it turns out, spends winters in the Phoenix area – said that the Continental tires that came with our bikes are not long lasting, something about the rubber compound being soft.

Needless to say, I would have been very nervous about riding on the nearly worn through tire so it was a huge relief to have found a solution before we even got on the road!

Jennifer also recommended a less traveled route that allowed us to get off of I-94 and enjoy a relatively quiet, wind aided ride into Dickinson.  Tomorrow we will pick up the items mailed to us and – big decision – ship back to Phoenix our camping gear. We have found the night’s sleep we get camping not as restorative as staying in motels or with our Warm Showers hosts so we are unburdening our load a little. Another thought is that as we proceed eastward and deeper into the summer, the days and nights will be increasingly hot making air conditioned motels all the more attractive.

Our last tenting site

We pulled off the road to an overlook featuring a scenic vista of The Painted Canyon.

The Painted Canyon in The Badlands. I learned that the term refers to a geological formation and not just to this area of North Dakota. The word is a translation of Mauvaises Terres so named because the soil is dry, crumbly and doesn’t hold together.

Our bikes at the overlook. While at the bike shop, a passerby noticed the Wright Foundation logo and said to the owner of the bike shop, “Ask that guy if the inventor of Lincoln Logs wasn’t Frank Lloyd Wright’s son.” A cigar to that gentleman!