Ro's Phrase Of The Day:
This was a very long day -- the day after a century, over 90 miles in itself, and while we didn't have much of a headwind on the eastbound part, the 30 mile jog north from the I-90 to the US Hwy 14 had the headwind, the only northern wind we'd seen in over a week. Hmmmph.
The first pit was 19 miles from camp, at 1880 Town, a place which hosts lots of buildings and items from 1880 to 1920. It also has some Dances With Wolves props (the movie was shot all around this area, from some Black Hills locations to Fort Pierre). We didn't go in, because of the length of the day, but it like it would have some pretty cool stuff.
Pit 2 was at a city called Midland, literally located at the bottom of two very steep hills. Going in was fun. Coming out wasn't. We turned north just after pit 1 onto Hwy 63, and had already hit the headwind. At least the pavement wasn't that bad. We finally -- after several rests, and Ro leading when I got too tired -- reached pit 3, located at the Little Brown Church On The Prairie. We then turned east again, and started the last 36 miles to camp. Getting out of the wind was good, but it was still a long stretch. Luckily, Paul and the Incognito Lounge were hanging out at the halfway-to-Washington-DC point, 25 miles from pit 3. This was an excellent location; we were just about fading.
We made it into Fort Pierre, and just before we got to camp, one of our traffic guys told us we had a choice: go left to camp, or right to ice cream. Mmmmm.. Ice cream won. We passed a statue of Casey Tibbs, rodeo rider extraordinaire, and made it to the Cool Spot, which definitely served wonderful ice cream.
Camp was interesting -- millions of small grasshoppers, and stiff stalks of grass/hay to try to lay out the tents on. We spent most of the evening next door at the air conditioned all-you-can-eat buffet in the Pizza Ranch (handily located next door). Someone brought a copy of the Holy Grail, and we watched about half of it until we were too sleepy.
Scenery shots:
