Roughrider State

It was obvious the moment we left Fargo that our planned four-day blitz across North Dakota was never going to happen as scheduled. We took a leisurely breakfast, then sat in a coffee shop waiting for the bike shop to open so Eal and Flavia could pick up new tyres, before navigating across to the west side of Fargo for a Walmart run and a stop at a sporting goods store so Flavia could stock up on warmer clothes.

I couldn’t tell you what time we actually got riding, but the day’s target had already shrunk considerably, down to the small settlement of Tower City. North Dakota, it turns out, allows cyclists on the interstate, roughly the equivalent of riding the A1 back home, and with services so thin on the ground across the state, several eastbounders had advised us to come off the Northern Tier for a few days and stick to the freeway instead, where towns came every thirty miles rather than every seventy.

We reached Tower City and pitched camp behind a motel that threw in a shower for free, then made for the gas station, the only source of food for miles, for ice cream and a good moan about the freeway riding. The shoulder is enormous but numbingly monotonous, with nothing much in the way of conversation possible over that width of tarmac, and every exit ramp brings its own small hazard, checking for traffic while hopping a lane across deep rumble strips.

Eal’s sizeable stack this morning.

Still on the interstate.

The following morning we went back to the gas station, which was attached to a decent little cafe serving up hearty breakfasts to the truckers passing through. Heading for Jamestown, we’d checked with locals about escaping the freeway for a stretch on the smaller roads that run alongside it, and came off for about fifteen miles before the surface turned to gravel and forced us back. A lot of the minor roads out here get nothing more than loose gravel thrown down, cheaper to maintain than proper tarmac.

Eal and I arrived in Jamestown a little ahead of Flavvy and killed time at the library until she caught us up. She had already been to the Frontier Village attraction in town, and later took us back for the guided tour, a neat little place with old buildings transplanted and rebuilt, not unlike the old town street at Preston Park back home. It also boasted the world’s largest buffalo, a claim I’m happy to take at face value having seen it.

Once we’d found the campground on the edge of town, I spotted a football sitting in the park office. The woman there let me borrow it for a while, and Eal and I went over to the big grassy patch to knock it around, the first time I’d kicked a ball in about twelve weeks. Still had it, more or less.

Frontier Village.

The fog leaving our Jamestown camp the next morning was thick enough to be genuinely unpleasant, hi-vis tops all round, made worse by the fact we were back on the interstate again. The sun eventually burned through after a couple of hours, and we stopped for second breakfast at the smallest of town cafes, where an older couple got talking to us. They were from Defiance, Ohio, said with the air of somewhere we’d never have heard of, and were delighted to learn we’d actually ridden straight through it, wishing us luck before we left. Our luck, unfortunately, ran out shortly after. Flavvy had been watching the weather on her iPad, and a big front was moving in, strong winds and storms forecast within a few hours. The sky ahead looked grim enough that I pulled us into a rest area, which at least had benches, shelter, free maps and a vending machine, all worth having out here where you can ride twenty or thirty miles without so much as a rock to hide behind.

The last ten miles into that rest area were brutal in the wind, and Flavvy had ended up stopping at the equivalent rest area on the opposite side of the freeway, a couple of miles back. We stayed in touch by phone and agreed on a shorter day than planned, aiming for Steele instead. Eal and I pushed on another twelve miles or so to Tappen once the sky brightened a little, then dropped into our lowest gears and slogged up the freeway into Steele. We’d sorted a camp deal with a shower behind a motel for five dollars when Flavia texted to say she’d made it as far as Tappen but wasn’t going any further in that wind, and would meet us for breakfast in Steele the next morning. I joked to Eal that we were off to the bar to get thoroughly drunk. I was only half joking.

The bar in question was called The Depot. After a bottle or two we told ourselves one more and then bed, the locals friendly enough and the evening still young. Eal ordered a scotch, and rather than measure him a single, the bartender simply filled his glass. By the time that round was gone we were more or less falling off our stools to leave when the owner, Tanya, came round wanting to talk and to buy us a drink, an offer neither of us had it in us to refuse. I don’t think I paid for another drink the rest of the night, of which there were plenty, and Eal even won some money at pool, which he promptly spent buying the bar a round in return. We had a genuinely great time with everyone in there, especially the bartender, Tom, who was heading to Bismarck the next day and thought he might pass us on the road, assuming we were fit to ride.

Not much else to picture today.

Bartender Tom at The Depot, Steele.

I felt fine the next morning, having stuck to beer, and figured Eal’s late shift onto scotch might mean a slow start for him, so I was planning to hand him my phone and maps for the ride to Bismarck and let him sleep it off. Flavia caught up with us behind the motel, thoroughly amused at the state of our night in Steele. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Eal sprang out of his tent fully ready to ride.

He was clearly taking it easy, but the gang was back together, and Flavia and I rode on ahead, one straightforward road all day, with Eal briefed on which campground to head for once he reached Bismarck. Fields of sunflowers stretched to the horizon for most of the ride, an unexpected kind of beauty for the middle of North Dakota. Dressing for the day out here is its own puzzle, frosty at the start, blazing by eleven, and I shed a layer roughly every half hour to keep pace with it. Just outside Bismarck, Tom from the night before caught up with us on the road, having stopped and chatted with Eal further back before pressing on himself. Flavia and I had a lovely afternoon in Bismarck, a farmers market, a coffee shop, and the Blarney Stone pub, where Tom found us for a third time after spotting our bikes parked outside. We made our way to the campground, slightly misguided by Flav-Nav, since I had officially retired from navigation duty for the time being, and found Eal already set up and ready for bed.

Flavia with her beloved sunflowers.

Have you noticed ND is flat yet?

Eal taking 5.

Tom met us on old highway 10 towards Bismarck.