Day 13

July 30, 2004

Rapid City, SD to Murdo, SD

In the morning, I rode with Cameron from England. He remarked that the scenery looked a lot like Scotland. “Oh yeah” I replied, “you have dinosaurs in Scotland, too?”

headed on down the road towards the Badlands

Some bad boys (“Ski” and “E”) in the Badlands

Badlands formation

Lunch at the Badlands visitor center. Mike from LA on the left. Rick from Texas. Rich “Ski”. And Gavin “Wingnut” Housh from California on the right. Gavin can always be seen, senselessly hammering down the road as hard as he can – nobody can figure out how he can do this, day after day.

Badlands info

Some Badland views as we climb out of the park

At the top of the climb

Praire home exhibit on the side of the road

Lots of prairie dogs in this area

prairie dog hole

John, Elizabeth, and Greg, checking out the prairie dogs. They have a bag of peanuts to feed them.

and here are the little critters

Prairie dog munching on a peanut

a lizard-like rodent scoring some peanut scraps

you just never know what you’ll find along the way

Riding through endless monotonous rollers, Ski and I looked for some oasis in the form of a store or gas station. We found one in this desolate Ghost Town (population 13)

Ski’s talking to Diane on the phone Again!

the town also had a rock yard

Today’s message board

and progress today.

Profile and statistics

The Badlands were between miles 46-80. After a short, steep climb out of the Badlands, we had endless rollers through wheat fields. Riding in some fast pacelines kept the average speed pretty high.