Herd of Buffalo Stops Traffic

What a beautiful sight we came across as we came to the lower portion of Needles Highway in South Dakota... a buffalo and a baby buffalo right at the edge of the road. As we looked more closely... a huge herd of buffalo had come into the area! The park rangers were moving us back because the buffalo go where the buffalo want to go! I stayed across the road, unlike one of our riders in the left photo, until the parent buffalo with the big horns and its baby moved back with the herd!

Tunnel on Needles Highway

Here Tony (L)(Netherlands), Sandy (R) and me get our picture taken by Dan, one of our great routers, in front of one of several tunnels made through the solid rock on Needles Highway in South Dakota. We climbed over 2,000 feet, often struggling with the steep hills but reached the top and then had a fast down of several miles. Some of us compared the up to waiting in line for hours to ride a roller coaster... and the "down" like a drop from a 2,000 foot roller coaster hill for over 35 minutes at 25- to 35 miles per hour through beautiful pine forest. The "Needles" actually refers to tall stone structures like in the next blog. If you look closely to the left you'll see Mount Rushmore's famous faces between the trees at the turn in Needles Highway!

Road Issues Make it Tough

Sometimes even when you drive a car the roads seem to disappear into the sky as does this road in South Dakota, but the real issue with this road and several others is the pavement surface! This one is gravel...11 miles of it and some up and down hills! This takes considerable concentration by our riders because one false move and the rider is eating the stones. On a couple steep hills I simply dismounted and walked for a quarter mile or more! Later in South Dakota we came to newly paved roads (some with asphalt being laid right next to us) and the tar that is put down collected on our tires and then picked up stones! On one gravel road my gear changer (derailleur) was damaged and had to be repaired so the gears would change properly. The repair and a new chain cost me $60 after that one day!

Camping in the Sky

The photo to the right is a look down to the van that carries our camping gear FROM the camp site in Lead, South Dakota. 88 stairs had to be negotiated to reach the football field that was at the highest point in the area...thus... it was aptly referred to as "Mile High Stadium." The winds at 5,000 feet were quite high until about 2 a.m. before they settled down! Lead, South Dakota, was a gold mining town over a century ago and it is literally built into the hills of the area with many streets extremely steep!

"Luxury" Living with Views

Every 7th day we get a day and a half off to rest, work on our bikes, do laundry, e-mail others and of course work on our blogs. We decided early on when we registered for the 4,250 mile adventure that once in a while we'd get out of our tents and into something with a hard cover over our heads. Here Sandy stands on our cabin's front porch at Devils Tower, Wyoming. The cabin is a little larger than by backyard shed with three beds, two electrical outlets and a ceiling light...but it had a roof that was not made of plastics! We had three great views from the cabin: back window to a pasture with a broken dead tree; front door to the Tower, and here a side view to a bluff along a river with the reddish rocks.

Beautiful Western Scenery

The states we have biked across have some absolutely beautiful

scenery. So far we have cross Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota totaling over 1,800 miles ans 80,000 feet of climbing!

Flying the Flags

Earlier in Wyoming Sandy and I purchased small USA flags to fly on July 3 and 4. We received many nice comments about our patriotic displays. Here at a brief rest stop I snapped a photo of our flags in front of the Grand Tetons.