Day 13: Glendive, MT to Dickinson, ND

I awoke to the pitter patter of rain. The start time of 6:30 was delayed an hour or so in hopes the rain would abate. The today was unique; the bikers rode on the shoulder of I-94 for the first 5 miles. Surprisingly, it was some of the better road stretches, as there was a large shoulder, well paved surface and a rumble strip separating them from the road. After the first 5 miles, the route went back to two lane highways for a mile, and then resumed to the interstate. A mile on, Will popped his first flat. Luckily, with the experience of Wes' flat a week earlier, the problem was resolved quite quickly.

The weather got gradually worse into the early afternoon. Around 11, we stopped for lunch in Beach North Dakota. After the second of the flat of the ride had occurred, he was pretty much done with the Eastern Montana scenery. Hopefully North Dakota would be a nice break in scenery.

Unfortunately, North Dakota was fairly similar for the first few miles. The road winded around some hills and parallelled the train tracks. At the checkpoint, I waited a total of 40 minutes and encountered only 3 passing vehicles. Despite the nice road, today's ride was the hardest ride of the trip by far. Rolling hills coupled with a headwind made progress slow. I stopped in the town of Malta to check in once more.. The town happened to be the entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, as well as the home to the Cowboy Hall of fame and the worlds largest inflatable water slide. 

At this point in the day, the rain had abated and the wind had calmed down. It was very quiet except for a few birds chirping in the distance and I randomly decided to go for my run. I thought it would be cool to run in the national park, but I wasn't going to pay the $10 walk in entrance fee to run for an hour of running, so I set out in search of some cool trails. A couple miles out of town I found a state park, which was quite nice... and free. About half way through my run, I sneezed up blood, and had it all over my hands and shirt. I'm sure it was quite the shock to many of the people in town as I ran back to my car. 

As the day progressed, the weather gradually improved. One of the cooler parks I drove by was Colored Canyon. It's sort of like the badlands. In addition, I also passed by some oil fields, something of which I've never seen in my life before. 

The day ended in Dickinson, ND. Again 100 miles was reached, but it was the hardest 100 they said they've ridden. Word on the street was downtown had a killer carry out thai place, so he had to try it out. It was a nice break from the pizza, burgers and Mexican food we'd eaten many subsequent nights.