It was a nice ride. The first part of the ride about 200 miles, was on interstate. The rest of the ride was on US highways. I don't remember the first one but the second one was US 281. Both roads were in excellent shape and four lane for a majority of the trip. The last 100 miles was on a two lane road but the speed limit was 65 and we only had to pass one vehicle. And we were passed very infrequently during the trip.
Most of the trip (which was about 480 miles) was very rural areas. We went through two large towns (think Chapin or maybe Chester) with populations of less than 30,000. One town we went through proudly proclaimed (on the town sign) a population of 99.
Most fields were planted in corn or hay, wheat or soy beans. Northern South Dakota was flat with few trees as was Minnesota. North Dakota has more trees and a more rolling type landscape.
We ran into rain for the last 20 miles. A real light rain but the truck traffic on the road actually got more water on us than the rain did. When we got to Carrington the rain had stopped and the sky was turning blue again.
We save some buffalo and cattle in North Dakota but not much live stock in South Dakota.
Carrington North Dakota is a small two, gas station two motels, and a couple of restaurants'. All within the block we are staying in. Makes it very easy to get dinner and breakfast and gas.
We have to get gas very frequently (every time we stop which is about every 100 miles) because you can't tell when you will find the next gas station.
The bikes go about 220 miles on a fill-up.
We saw one strange thing on the trip today. About 100 miles from Carrington, ND we say this strange contrail in the sky in the shape of a U. We watched for awhile and saw contrail make a sharp right hand turn and then make an almost perfect X in the sky. It was not a commercial aircraft. The turn was very sharp. It was as if the aircraft was making the symbols on purpose. It should be noted we were about 150 miles south east of Minot ND which has an US Air Force base and use to have a large number of strategic nuclear missiles installed.
Oh, I forgot this little bit of news. Here in North Dakota, they are closing some schools early because of the heat. The high today will be in the mid 90's.
Pictures to follow shortly
Minnesota
Ok South Dakota looks a lot like Minnesota except that we did not see any lakes in Minnesota the land of 10,000 lakes. But we did see this nice lake in South Dakota. The temperature dropped about 8 degrees as we passed through/by the lake.
North Dakota
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