Williston to Stanley 72 miles

7-08-2010

Mornings are always rough, and first days after rest days are even worse.

Today morning found it darker than we're used to.  The time zone change as we came into North Dakota meant that it was light much later than we've been used to and the sun didn't come up until after we were making breakfast.

Our tent city, at this campground we stayed with a total of 16 cyclists, most of whom are with us again tonight.  We just all happen to be traveling in the same direction and at the same speed right now.

Once we were on the road, we had to get through a very busy section of Highway 2.  Through Williston, the traffic was very heavy and the shoulder was full of rocks and debris.  Once we were out of town, the traffic stayed farily heavy, but the shoulder got a little better.  However, we did have one really nasty stretch where the shoulders were less than a foot wide, and half of that was rumble strip.

Jeff cruising up a hill, i the back ground you can see how green the fields are in ND right now.

At about the halfway point we rolled into Ray, ND.  We found a little cafe and had some breakfast.  I really enjoy stopping for a midmorning meal.  It's really cheap and breakfast food has always been some of my favorite.  Then we were on the road again.

You can see the narrow shoulder we had to ride today, you also see Doug, Therese, Tom, and Jeff stopped for a break.  In the background is a yellow VW van, that's Kathy who is driving the sag wagon for Ron, who rides with us briefly every couple of days.

As the day wore on, it started to get pretty warm.  The high today was only 82, but that's a lot warmer than we've had in several weeks.  We also didn't have the benifit of any wind today, which made everything seem to drag by, though at least we didn't have a headwind.

After so much green, these yellow fields of mustard really glowed.

Along the road today, we noticed a lot of oil drilling and related construction.  This part of North Dakota is in a major boom, similar to what the Rock Spring area was experiencing a couple of years ago.

We've been sharing the roads with these oil/fracing fluid trucks since we entered North Dakota.  The rig in the background is a common sight in the part of Wyoming where I live as well.

It felt good to roll into town, I had gotten into a rythum, but I was still tired and hot.  A nice shower, and a trip to the grocery store for dinner, and we all settled down into our camping mindset.