Day 94 - ending at Minot, ND - The Great Plains Trail - Sort Of

August 16, 2023

Day 94 - ending at Minot, ND

Day 94 - Tolley, ND to Minot, ND

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It was calm last night when I went to bed at 12:45am, but very windy this morning when I woke up at 7:26am. I checked the weather radar. Rain was on the way. I added guylines the tent's rainfly corners in case it got any windier. At 8:45am we had very light sprinkles with no wind. More hit or miss rain was coming, which had me contemplating taking the day off. If I did, maybe I could catch up somewhat on replies to journal comments.

What I really wanted to do was eat breakfast, but The Country Mouse isn't open until 10:00m, so I worked some on yesterday's report. At 10:10am I walked over for breakfast. I had almost no cell phone signal, so needed the bar's wifi to post. However, their wifi was having issues cutting in and out. I finally got everything posted shortly after I was done eating.

All the rain had pretty much missed us, but the wind had picked up fairly strong from the northwest. My routing for my next destination - Old Settlers Park in Burlington, North Dakota - was south and east. I decided then that I would pack up and take advantage of the wind.

I was on my way at 12:50pm, facing the first, and as it turns out, only uphill of the day. I hadn't realized how sheltered from the wind I had been down in the valley. The force of the wind on the hill as I walked up was something I'd never experienced before while bicycling. At one point both me and the bike almost went over. I made it to the top of the hill. Now it was time to see if I could actually bicycle with a wind pushing me forward this hard. No problem! I hardly had to pedal. What was a problem was parking the bike so that it didn't go over when I stopped to take pictures. Then taking the pictures was difficult because it was hard to hold the phone still.

At 1:51pm, I turned east onto pavement. My GPS indicated that I had 10 miles going straight east on this road. Turns out I was on highway ND-5, and my next turn would be to the south just before Mohall. I arrived at the west end of Mohall at 2:56pm. I had routed to go into town 1 mile and then turn south. But with that plan, a little later I'd have to go a mile west. So I skipped seeing downtown Mohall, and decided instead to find some shelter from the wind for a break. Getting behind a building at the nearby 4-H Fairgrounds worked for that. After my break, I had to walk back west a little ways, since there was no riding into this wind.

CR-9 was the road I took south, and it was paved up to CR-26. I continued straight on the now gravel road CR-9. Handling the bike on this gravel was much harder than coasting on pavement. The west component of the wind kept pushing me off my chosen path and into deep gravel. After half a mile I decided this wasn't going to work. Old Settlers Park was almost straight south and a little east. Any other routing there would have me going against the wind at some point. I looked at my map and decided that I could get to Minot without going west or north. And I could get a motel room there, since there's no way I could set up a tent in this wind anyway. So my routing would be go east on paved CR-26, then south on highway US-83. But first I'd have to go north half a mile to get back to CR-26. That was a slow walk that took me 15 minutes.

At 5:30pm I turned south onto US-83. Going east or going south, the effect of the wind on me was the same - some forward push and some side push.

I made it to the northern edge of Minot at 7:59pm. I'd stopped a little earlier to figure out which motel I wanted to stay at. In the end I went with Super 8. As I headed south into town I was quite surprised to see that Minot has a fairly steep downhill. The Super 8 was only part way down that hill, and I was there at 8:20pm. The room rate here is a lot cheaper than other Super 8 motels I've been at on this trip - $65.20. One other thing different about this Super 8 though, is it's a split level building, so there are no 'ground floor rooms', per se. I partially unloaded the bike and was able to get it up the half flight of stairs. When I had everything in room 202, I walked downhill about a block to Dairy Queen for a carryout supper.

I wrapped up my evening with picture selection and writing my evening report to family and friends. Since I'm farther along now than I'd planned to be, tomorrow will be at shorter day. I'm going to see about sleeping in until 8:00am tomorrow morning. The motel breakfast ends at 9:30am, so that should work.

Jeff

Spent: $15.14 plus $4 (breakfast) + $65.20 plus $5 (motel room) + $10.94 (supper) = $100.28