Saturday, September 24, 2011

Badlands and Iowa

After Piedmont, South Dakota I headed out to the Badlands. Now, the Badlands are beautiful. Highly recommend going out there for some camping. I mentioned previously there were no pictures of my time in the Badlands. The reason for this is it was getting hot. Very hot. Too hot to handle a 2 hour ride during the day. So I went to Mt. Rushmore during the day. Now money was getting pretty tight, so rather than go into the parking lot for the attraction I just rode around the area (it's nice), found a utility road I could leave my bike on, then scrambled up some boulders for a view.

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I left Piedmont at around 10pm, well after the hottest part of the day. I got to the free campsite in the Badlands around midnight. I was hoping it would be mostly empty considering how hot it was, but such was not the case. Luckily there were some people still awake and making enough noise that I didn't feel bad about rolling in late, and being that I set up the tent once already I had it figured out got it all up in just a couple of minutes with minimal effort.

I awoke at 6 in the morning, because it was already too hot to sleep. I packed all my gear up as fast as I could. I had a liter of water with me, and I poured 1/2 of it out onto my shirt just before heading out to keep cool. I didn't know that it was already over 90 degrees, I just knew it was uncomfortably hot and that it was going to be a very long day.

I got out of the badlands as fast as I could, and while it was beautiful, and I got to see some mountain goats up close, it was so hot that even thinking about stopping for pictures made me nauseous.

I had 400 miles to ride and it was 107 degrees that day. I took it 60 miles at a time. The routine was ride 60 miles, pull over, gas up, drink some ice water, hose myself down in cold water. By keeping my clothes wet it keeps me much cooler as it evaporates while I ride. But by the time I got another 60 miles down the road, I would be mostly dry again. So it went and it was more or less bearable up until the last 100 miles from Spirit Lake, Iowa; when the humidity went way up which stopped the water from evaporating.

I started to focus like a laser on the road ahead of me instead of being aware of everything ahead of me, as well as my surroundings. "Just a few more turns and I'm there." In retrospect, I think I barely made it. If I had to ride for another 1/2 hour I would have had to pull over and lie down if I had the sense to. Otherwise I may have just passed out from heat stroke.

When I arrived at my hosts door feeling, looking, and smelling like a beaten wet dog, they asked me "You're leaving tomorrow for Missouri?" "Yeah that's the plan." to which they thankfully informed me "No you're not. You'll never make it in this heat. It's supposed to break by Wednesday evening. You can stay until Thursday." (It was Monday).

I felt like I had just been rescued (twice in one week!). Big thanks to Doug and Linda, I think you guys may have saved my life.

Now when I pictured Iowa, I pictured flat and boring. I did not picture

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a beach side community complete with a boat accessible bar and palm trees.

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Apparently they bring them in during the winter.

My hosts took me sailing

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and they even set up a tour of the Victory Motorcycles plant through a friend of theirs.

Doug and I in the front room:

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There were absolutely no pictures allowed inside the plant, but it was a very cool experience.

After the heat broke, I headed out that Thursday. As much as I wanted to head down to Missouri, I just couldn't. It was still over 100 degrees down there and there was no sign of the temperature dropping in the immediate future. So I altered my route and went to Madison, Wisconsin. I was 6 days from home.


Smell no evil.

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