Day 4 – Glendive, MT to Medora, ND

Distance 65.5

Total Distance 170.5

I feel like I say this every time I do a trip, but this blog tends to be the same, day after day.  Sorry about that.  A great day of riding.  I started the day riding the interstate.  It was the route that had to be taken due to no other roads, but I think in the past, I have only had to ride about 10 miles of interstate.  Today it was probably 25 miles all together.  It was some on and then off and then on again.  Tomorrow will be much the same.  There isn’t much traffic on the interstate, however. Mostly trucks.  I am amazed at how few cars there are.  When I was off the interstate, I was on a road that followed pretty much the same course.  There was no traffic on it.  I was probably passed by three cars all day.  It was so nice.

I went through some interesting towns today.  They were old and seemed to have a lot of history in them. I et some interesting people that were fun to talk to about the little towns.  Mostly they said it was hard keeping people there.  The young just have to move away to find work. We are in Medora, ND tonight which is a little town at the gates of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  I was hoping to get the ride done in time to go see the park, which we did do.  I didn’t think that the park was as impressive as most of the National Parks I have seen.  It was pretty, but much of the ride along the roads I traveled today looked the same. This park is the only National Park named after a person.  It is to display the badlands of North Dakota and Theodore Roosevelt actually came here to hunt bison and loved it so much he bought ranched in this area and spent a lot time here.

The scenery today was just wonderful.  I am really enjoying the beauty of this area. Yes, the wind was at my back again today.  My average speed was down to 15.2 (which was fun to ride).  I think tomorrow is going to be a wake up call for me.  The wind is supposed to be changing direction.

As I mentioned, we are in North Dakota tonight.  It was amazing to me how things changed from one state to the next.  It seemed the cattle ranches disappeared and dryer looking hills appeared.  I stopped for lunch today just after entering North Dakota and really was missing my past riding companions, Tim and Nancy.  It was always nice to know that they were there as we rode each day and to talk as we would eat lunch and see things. It feels a little different by myself.  It is good I have Lyle to meet up with.  Being completely alone would be kind of a bummer.

Some pictures of the ride today:

And of the Park:

And the moon tonight!!