Greetings from Minnesota.
North Dakota was a breeze relative to Montana. The winds sucked, but less. The route consisted entirely of the I-94, which was safer than anything Montana had to offer, yet presented a new array of obstacles.
The shoulders are very wide, yet filled with rumble strip. This meant of 15 feet of shoulder, we were relegated to the tiniest of lined along the far edge. Which brings us to our next problem; wires.
Truck tires are lined with a layer of wire reinforcement within. Truck tires also happen to explode frequently enough that there is a great deal of this wire along the shoulder of the freeway. Being unable to avoid them because of our restricted riding area, many of these wires find their way into a very bad place... our tires.
Puncture after puncture after puncture.
Oh, and it rained and thundered a lot as well.
We still managed to pull almost exclusively 100+km days, including a 135.
The bull, Maltana, was blamed for the bad luck and was jettisoned in Valley City, ND, forever facing the concrete bridge on the west side of town. Sorry, buddy.
We entered Minnesota after surviving a hail storm in Fargo, which was less challenging than surviving the drivers of Fargo. We got no welcome sign.
I had been looking forward to this stage of the trip since the early planning stages, as it meant miles upon miles of paved off road bike trail along a repurposed rail corridor.
We spent two days on the trail, split up with a stay at Mike's place, a guy we met along the trail in Osakis, MN. He and his girlfriend Steph opened up their pantry (and beer fridge!) on as moment's notice and went well out of their way to make us comfortable.
After that, it was on to Minneapolis.
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