Sunday, July 3rd
The sound of my tent flapping in the wind wakes me up. I’d camped on the beach, obscured from the roads through the park by a block of showers. I was somewhere inbetween the two proper campsites. It was windy, and i’d weighted my tent down with the panniers, and prepared for the cold air from the river with extra layers, but in fact it was a pleasantly warm night.
It was around 5.45 by the time I’d packed up and began heading out of the park, stopping at the showers on my way out.
I headed into Pierre along a bike path, nothing was open since it was not even seven yet, and a Sunday. Only the gas stations showed signs of life. I pulled into one to buy some trail mix and asked the guy if anywhere was open for breakfast, other than McDonald’s my options were limited, but as he fiddled with a remote control which changed the price of the gas on the big sign outside (I always wondered how they did that) he suggested a place over the river called Perkins.
I crossed the Missouri and pulled into the restaurant. A few people were eating. It was the kind of place where the menus where laminated, and huge, both physically and in terms of the variety of items one could order from. I drank coffee and decided on eggs, four bits of bacon, pancakes, and hash browns. I hadn’t eaten dinner and hopefully had a long day ahead which I needed the fuel for.
I was aiming for Kadoka, what looked like a small town around 30 miles from the Badlands national park entrance which would put me in a good position to approach it the following day.
The wind was unchanged. The first 45 miles were heading south west still, which would be more tolerable with just the side wind to contend with, but then I had a 35 mile stretch heading south to take me down to the I90 highway before I continued west again.
The time passed fairly quickly for this first chunk of the day. The landscape had changed a little, almost pure rolling hills, which were tough but provided some variation. It reminded me of the small amount of cycling i’d down in Yorkshire a couple of years ago. Otherwise it was much the same as the last few days, as in a lot of not very much – a sign at the start of the route captured this: ‘No services for 66 miles’.
I stopped at 40 miles in, at a roadside park, a few picnic benches painted green underneath a shelter, two toilets, and access to a small lake where two guys fished, reeds shifting in the wind. I made coffee, it cooled quickly outside and I was not looking forward to the left turn I’d have to make in 5 miles to face the wind head on.
Th Badlands looked so stark and rocky, yet it was still so green here, only about 100 miles away. I wondered what the transition between these two very different landscapes would look like.
I checked my phone and I’d gained an hour – I’d cycled through another time zone, now I was on Mountain Daylight Time, the first sign that my route would become a lot less flat.
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The next 5+ hours I spent cycling into the wind were without doubt the toughest of the trip so far. I probably wrote that yesterday, and I’ll likely write it again, but for now those 35 miles were the most brutal I’ve cycled, ever.
The wind was 19mph, the hills were constant. There isn’t too much else to say about it other than it took forever, it was demoralising, and physically challenging in a way it’s not really possible to prepare for or adjust to.
22 miles in was one small town with a gas station where I took a break for half an hour or so and drank a large Dr Pepper and ate an ice cream sandwich. Not exactly sensible fuel, more a reward for the punishment I felt I was enduring.
The remaining 14 or so miles passed marginally easier, and I pulled into a gas station where the road met the interstate. On the horizon a thick belt of dark clouds loomed. I’d been checking the weather all day and there was no mention of rain or storms, but this didn’t look good.
I carried on regardless, keen to make up the last 20 miles to Kadoka. Soon after I set off, on the route 16 which ran parralel to the I90 interstate, I saw lightning flash in the distance and it felt like I was cycling more or less directly into the storm. The wind was picking up, the crickets were loud, everything felt ominous.
I spotted a rest area at the side of the interstate and pulled in to take shelter. There were two structures with octagonal roofs held up by yellow bricks, which covered benches. I leant my bike against the wall and sat on the table flipping between Google weather and Dark Sky app on my phone which had up to the minute satellite images. It looked like the next hour would be wet, so I decided to stay put. Inside the rest station a Chinese man had a kettle plugged into the wall and was making instant ramen for his family. It was a strange place to find yourself.
It drizzled but the heavy rain and lightning never came. The sky still looked a little menacing but it would be dark in an hour and I still had 15 miles to ride so I set off.
That last hour, specifically the second half of it, almost made up for the previous 10. The sun was going down and the road I was on was all my own. The sunset, the odd cloud formations which had been caused by the storm, the fields of cows and ragged mounds of dirt in the distance, everything came together like the vague postcard image of the west that I had in my mind, and after enduring three days of torture it felt like this was my reward. No photo I took really captured this, it was the kind of moment which could only be experienced.
I’d covered 100 miles, I’d cycled through heat, wind and rain, and witnessed this amazing calm end to it all. I’d cycled 32 miles just to treat myself to a cup of coffee which tasted awful by most standards. It was small things like this – a hot coffee, smooth roads, and a wind on your back that you came to appreciate so much more after a tough stretch. This journey today could have been completed in a car in just a few hours, with far less resistance or struggle, but travel by bike is not just about completing a distance, it’s about experiencing it – all of it, both good and bad.
I was on a high from the struggle of the day, and the joy of the last hour and I almost forgot I had to sleep. The town was full of motels, most of which looked shut or fully abandoned. The towns location, directly next to the interstate, meant it was probably just a stopping point for truckers or people on their way to badlands. I went to a gas station to buy a drink, then next door to Subway, there was a queue of 8 or so people, probably because it was the only place you could get food at 9pm on a Sunday night anywhere in miles. I bought a foot long sandwich and ate it in around 3 seconds.
I asked for a price in one motel – $113 + tax. Almost three times as much as the one I’d stayed in a few nights ago. I’d have to camp, as I’d originally planned to. The campground was just behind the motel. the office was closed, it was dark, all I could make out were the boxy shapes of caravans, some with people inside but many which looked unoccupied.
I found an unclaimed spot at the end. And, in the dark, quickly assembled my tent and chucked my stuff inside. I was a sweaty mess but I was here.
Map
