No exciting or unusual people today, just me against Montana. My plan today was to get into North Dakota today. First thing was to pack up and ride over to Albertsons to pick up a few provisions. After stowing the stuff in bags and eating a glazed donut, I realized one of my cycling gloves wasn’t hanging from the handlebar, where it was supposed to be.

On cooler mornings I wear some cool weather gloves and hang my cycling gloves from the handlebars where they can air out. I immediately presumed that one had fallen off on the ride to the grocery store. Now the question is, do I retrace my steps and hopefully find the missing glove, or press onward with just one cycling glove?

Since I was less than 2 miles from the campsite, I decided to retrace my steps, including going down the wrong street, as I did on the way to the grocery store.

Well I did find the glove, just outside the entrance to the state park. Now it was almost 8:30 and I could get on my way for real.

Here’s where Montana decided that she really didn’t want me to leave. With gray skies all around, along with threats of rain, I found the wind was blowing from the east, right into my face. This slowed my pace to a crawl. I’ve always said that I’d rather climb mountains than deal with headwinds, which is why I’m doing this ride from west to east, as the prevailing winds blow from west to east. However today was a different story, and as much as I hoped, the winds never shifted or abated.

The other thing that is unusual about today’s ride, is that this part of the route took me onto interstate highway 90 for part of the ride.

Compounding the difficulty of this ride is the number of miles I had put on the past couple of days. I think my body was feeling tired from those previous efforts.

Getting to Wibaux, the last town in Montana, the “official” route has the cyclist get off I-94 tour through the town, then resume riding on the interstate on the other side of town. The skies were getting darker, but I figured a diversion through town, might reduce the amount of wind I’ve been battling on the wide open interstate highway, so I took the exit.

Well wouldn’t you know it, but the road between the exit and on-ramp was all torn up and closed to traffic. The detour ended up being about a mile, half of which was on a dirt road.

Finally through the detour, I merge back onto I-94 and just then, it starts to rain. I had my rain shell top on, as I use it as a general purpose jacket and wind-breaker. However, I decided to stop and put my rain pants on, just in case the rain stuck around.

I never deviated from my goal of reaching North Dakota, but figured I would find a room at the motel in Beach, right over the border, instead of going to a campground another 20 miles on. As I crossed the border, I found the highway was under construction and restricted to one travel lane, each direction. Thank goodness there was a wide shoulder on the east bound side. This shoulder was wide enough that I was worried that a vehicle might use it for a travel lane, so it wasn’t perfect. Anyway I was quite happy to exit when I finally reached exit one and get a room at the Buckboard Inn.

After checking in, I reached out to my cousin, Scott, who lives in Bismarck. We should be able to get together in a few days.

I’m also taking advantage of a little free time and doing my laundry again. I’ll be really fresh for the rainy day that is forecast for tomorrow.

42 torturous miles today for a total of 1330.