CANDISC 2012

Well, another tour is underway...and this one's going to be our best one yet! On team Quadzilla, we have the same members, in the same order...at least for now... :) We got out of town fairly quickly (a first) and made our way to our destination, while snacking on some cheese and crackers. For some reason I don't think anyone liked my version of singing the Seussical play I was in....singing it now anyway. In fact, I don't think anyone likes my singing period. I was told it was a gift....clearly one I don't possess. Anyway, back to the story. We got out okay and stopped after a couple of hours to eat at a Mexican restaurant (I think it was called Kelly's) where I got a ginormous (yes it's a word!) fajita chicken burrito. DELICIOUS! Dad suggested I take a nap so I could stay up with him when we were closer to Sioux Falls. I followed his advise and slept for about 45 minutes before we stopped later to fill up on gas. Great. I couldn't sleep for the rest of the hour that I tried to doze. Julie and I switched spots so I was sitting shotgun for the next three hours. There was some lightning when we were going by Omaha and our stupid GPS did not tell us to be in the right lane so we missed our turn. At least we didn't have to go 10 miles before we could turn around. We skirted the city and headed into the wind and lightning where Dad and I were looking for tornadoes...it was certainly the right conditions.

Major fajita burrito! (And a veggie for Julie!)

Dad's on a diet

To help mi padre stay awake (and me too) I talked. A lot. I'm surprised his ear didn't fall off. My conversation was a lot of random jibberish with the occasional proclamation of "I'm a MOOSE!" Okay, I was tired. And not to mention my penguin joke....but you all have probably heard that one, but I'll tell it again. So there's 2 penguins, in a bathtub and one said pass the soap! HAHAHAHAHAHA! It's funny, trust me. So with my ridiculous jokes, we made our way to Si-OX Falls. When we tried to make a reservation for Motel 6, we found everything was full. ARE YOU KIDDING?! Sturgis, did it to us again! We had to settle for a $106 room at a Days Inn, before tax. Figures. And it wasn't even a nicer one!

I woke up to an alarm. Six hours of sleep. That's it. And I've been getting at least ten daily. As you can imagine, no 14 year old high school freshman wants to get up that early...at least I don't. I did get up and walked to the lobby where a complementary breakfast was waiting and ate two blueberry scones and some raisin bran cereal. After eating, we got everything in the van and I fell asleep. (Imagine that!)

We have had to put up with motorcycles roaring past all morning and I am not so enthused by this. Actually, it's getting on my nerves and fast too. We stopped at a rest stop that had some nice trees and facilities when we got into North Dakota. Natalie claimed she beat me running to a tree and back but she didn't go around the ones behind it, therefore cheating and losing. Now that is the kind of logic I understand. Later we ate at a Subway, where one of the ladies didn't want to give Dad and Julie's foot long turkey enough meat. Apparently in her eyes it was wasteful. Thankfully the one making the sandwiches didn't listen to her and made the sandwich with plenty of turkey. Natalie and I got the kids meals, tuna for her, turkey for me but when the lady rang up the order, she didn't have Natalie or I down for a kids meal. She just charged us for the sandwiches and said she couldn't fix it. Nice lady. Okay so we just ate our 3 inch sandwiches and continued on our merry way.

Epic fail ninja running	We are really bad at this....
TRAIN!	There are so many windmills!

This year the roads weren't flooded! Yay! So the drive was much smoother and there were not any detours. We drove for awhile before stopping at another rest area and racing across the grass, again. This place was not nearly as nice. When we got to Bismarck, we had our sights set on Olive Garden but the line was out the door so everyone decided they wanted Taco Bell. That is except me...I'm not a big Taco Bell fan... We wrote a list on the way to Garrison that had some funny "Profound" sayings. Among the list were: "It is what it is." and "A horse is a horse, of course, of course." We got our packets at Fort Stevenson and found our yellow shirts but we realized there are multicolored shirts. Apparently, the different colors represent the amount of years you have ridden on CANDISC. We got our bags put in the motel room and we are expecting a quiet night before our 70 mile ride tomorrow.

The motel room, with Cheese Its

Surfin the web for LOLcats on icanhascheezburger

This morning we woke up to the freezing temperature Dad set the room AC to. Okay, I am totally not used to that in my room...it's way hot in there! So after realizing that the truck was leaving in an hour and a half, I hauled my rear end out of bed and pulled on my riding clothes. We got the sun screen on and checked our bags again before tossing them in the van and heading over to Fort Stevenson State Park. We got all of our stuff on the truck before the door closing time and then parked the van. The quad was assembled and soon we were on our way, hopefully not to dooms day. (See I'm a poet and you didn't even know it!) After getting six glorious miles of tailwind, we turned and went out across the lake. My ears fell off on the side of the road, thanks to a bunch of Harley riders and if you saw a news report, "Teenager Loses Ears Thanks To Sturgis Riders" you know it was me. We put up with traffic for 20 miles (total) before finding the buffalo food stop. Essentially we had burgers for breakfast. We ate those and then rode across the beautiful dam, or as Natalie put it, "the dam beauty." The fish hatchery is also in that area. A ways down the road we stopped and decided to snack on something before we made it 20 more miles. Natalie and I shared a Squirt and Julie got some Chex-Mix.

Getting the bike ready....	This was taken when we were ready to leave the buffalo stop
The Dam Hill (all puns intended)	Natalie

The sunflowers were in full bloom and some of the fields were really pretty. There were some old cars at a bar (it must have been a classic car club) and we were fixing the bike, or trying to. As it turns out, our middle ring is fried. In other words, it clicks almost at every pedal stroke that has the slightest power to it. We are currently stuck with a big ring and a granny ring for gears. A great way to start the tour! We did manage to make it to a museum where we watched a 15 minute video. It was about the Native Americans near Knife Creek. The story is an interesting one about the way they lived in earth lodges. We walked around and then rode into town where we got a bag of sea salt and cracked pepper chips, M&Ms, two Gatorades, a Mountain Dew, Coke, sandwich, and Fig Newtons. The total? Almost $30. Quick shops are not cheap.

Sunflowers!	North Dakota has bunches of these!
Earth lodge as used by the Native Americans of the Knife River	Natalie and the lodge
Enter at your own risk...	The inside!
Padre y mi hermana	Shanack Time!

We rolled into town (after nine hilly miles where we had to stop on a hill because of that dumb middle ring not allowing us to shift) where we set up our tents and unpacked our gear. We took a hay ride to the elementary school and community pool where there were showers. Natalie and I got in and she learned how to dive. It was interesting to say the least, but she did really good. After we were all clean, we went down to a bar that was clearly obsessed with wolves. It was actually really neat but some of the people behind the counter were not so keen on helping us out. Natalie and I played pool with Natalie losing one game. I then played Dad and I lost like a boss. We ate two pizzas, one being chicken alfredo, the other buffalo chicken. When we tried to play pool the first time, we couldn't get the cue ball out when we had 4 balls left so some guy came over and shook the table, allowing the ball to fall out, but into the regular ball catch. Okay....so he gave us all of the balls to start a new game.

Did I forget to mention, I didn't get sunscreen on my legs. I can't wait to hear all of my friends comments at that... :) After dinner we played keep away back at the campsite with some foam football thing Natalie brought with us. It was really fun and before long, we did have to go to sleep so we could wake up in the morning. Seventy miles can take it out of you.

Coal factory	Power plant
Windmills	These were so close to us!
Luggage hauling service	Tent pitching
Hay ride	Horsie!

Ninja dive!	On the bus
There is a wolf on the ceiling!	Pizza

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! How would you like to wake up to that at the butt crack of dawn? At first I thought I was dreaming, but when I heard that dang cow MOOOOOO again, I knew I wasn't. It sounded like it was right next to the tent...but it wasn't. I guess they don't use roosters in North Dakota.

When we hauled our stuff over to the truck, we found that no one had supervised putting it together, so to speak. There was barely enough room for us to put our bags at the very back. We also discovered that we have no sunscreen. When we went up to the convince store (where we got an egg, bacon, and cheese breakfast sandwich) we ended up purchasing a teeny tiny sunscreen bottle for $7.59. I did not know the price of sunscreen was that high, for a tiny bottle but then again, this is a quick shop we're talking about. After eating, we got on the bike and rode the 20 miles to a dairy farm that was also a sag stop. They were running tours using a trailer with hay bales to sit on, pulled by a tractor. The baby cows were so cute! It almost made me want to take one home, until we saw the bigger cows. I don't think Dad would want one of those rampaging through the house. We ate sticks of cheese, Mountain Dew White Out, and brownies. We are so nutritious!

Breakfast of champions	Julie's happy...
Sunflowers	You can see for miles
Entrance to the Dairy Farm	Hay ride
Cool tractor dude	BABY COWS!
Bags of silage	Cows
Picture time!	New Salem Sue (that's the cow)

After snacking we rode the last 5 miles into town where we ate some real food at a cafe. Although the wait took forever (almost an hour) the food was delectable...sort of....and the milkshakes were great. We pitched our tents and then caught the next bus down to the swimming pool. Unfortunately the pool was filled with bugs so you had to watch where you jumped but otherwise it was nice. The diving board wasn't my favorite because of the low springiness but you get what you get.

After swimming, we walked back to the tent where I worked on this story for a little while. We rode to downtown for some dinner and ended up eating at a bar that has some definite character. It had a little garden on the side of a collapsing building and some fun signs that said "No spitting" and "No pissing". We ate two pizzas (chicken alfredo) and read some of the puzzle things on the inside of the Mickey's beer caps that were in a jug the bartender saved.

Chocolate milkshakes	Me Gusta!
At the pool	Le bar
This is one chilling deer	Me and my goofiness

Anyway, so we decided to play pool of which I lost miserably twice. The first time, because I hit the 8 ball in too soon and the second time because I scratched on the 8 ball when I shot it in. I had a great game going there. *Le sigh* The bartender's fiancé owns the place and is a ninja decorator/landscape artist and later we went to check out their landscaped house from the outside (by invitation of course). In their front yard is this play house they built for their grandkids to play in and I am super jealous. I could use one of those for a hang out...to do homework and stuff...educational stuff. And this made Natalie want a cat. No surprise there. She thinks it could be an outdoor cat that sleeps in there at night. Kind of like a mini home. Back to the story. So they also have a neat little pond and a garage that looks like a barn. Across the street Dad hit the jack pot. It had a bunch of old (and I mean really old) cars that looked like they were from an auction. Most were rotting away but some were almost all intact.

When we arrived at the campsite once more, we played football again and then went to sleep.

Play house!	Natalie wants one....
Football/keep away/thing	She thinks she won....

I got up this morning (wishing I could sleep in) and started to pack up my stuff for today's ride. We got started okay and ate breakfast at a Tesoro gas station (those are popular around here). We turned soon after we started and had some really nice scenery to view. There weren't too many morons out this morning (which was fine by us) so the ride was fairly good. When we came to the first town with anything to do, some trucks were pulling out of a gravel road, loaded up with dirt type stuff and filled the air with dust. Thanks guys. Real helpful for the bikers. We snacked on some food at (guess what?) a Tesoro. After we got going again, we had some major hills to contend with...and a MAJOR headwind. Life on the bike was really hard for 21 miles, grueling in fact. Was I happy at this point? No. As you can imagine your narrator was quite annoyed but I digress. The ride overall wasn't too exciting, but the scenery was okay, as you try not to swallow bees. We ended up stumbling into a sag put on by a boy scout troop making wraps of some sort (which we didn't eat) but getting water and eating some crackers took awhile. When we were on the road again, the wind was switching to our favor and the rain cloud that was looming didn't get us wet. After rocking and rolling, we ate some pizza at a quick shop 20 miles later. In another 17, we were there but the wind switched out of our favor once again. I think I lost my butt out on the road somewhere. If you find it, please send it back. School starts soon and I would look like an idiot without it.

Beautiful!	Neato Frito Clouds
My bro	Quick shop again!
Someone's hot....	The view is incredible

When we got into town, we loaded up our stuff and got our overnighted package from mi madre containing a middle ring for the bike. We took showers at the motel where we got stuck in a pink, frilly, cat clad room. GREAT. Natalie's heaven. The bed spreads are even cheetah print. Shoot me now. The lady is also a bit crazy but she did make us some good cookies. They probably have cat crap and pee in them. Just what I need: to be poisoned on day 3 of riding. Dad and I walked over to the luggage truck a few blocks away to get tools to put the middle ring on and discovered that Rory, the bike mechanic guy had his group of worshipers around him. Where's mine? Am I not cool enough for a group? I suppose Julie, Dad, and Natalie will have to do...

We walked over to the field house and got dinner because the diner closed at 6:00. It was supposed to be $9 but there was only one piece of meat left and they let all of us in for free. We ate the last piece of meat along with pasta salad, corn and baked potatoes. It really wasn't all that great. The meat was dry and tough, the corn was canned, the only thing for the potatoes was sour cream, and the pasta salad was average. They had a cooler full of drinks and people were getting some as they walked by before one lady came out and wanted $1 for each drink. We ate and then checked the times on store openings before coming back to the freakish cat room. HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy campers now moving much faster	Dinner!
This was taken by accident.	Good times rule!

Imagine waking up with the remnants of a dream in your brain....about a cat attacking your face. That's what my morning was like. Once I woke up, I fell asleep again almost as quickly. Being on Mountain Time now, we could sleep in an extra hour. YAY FOR THAT! We loaded up our stuff and dumped our luggage on the truck before eating at Uncle's Auto Shop and Diner. The breakfast pizza was pretty good and so were the cookies I ate. Dad and Julie ate these GINORMOUS cinnamon rolls and Natalie stole one of my cookies. For some reason, I was told I needed to share. Once we were on the road, we were hoping and praying for tailwinds....and we were rewarded in the smallest amount. In some spots, we had a cross tailwind and thanks to the short day, we didn't die...almost. We stopped 9 miles into the ride to inspect my crackling wire but it worked fine after looking at it. We decided to try and solve the squeak on the bike and stopped 5 miles later at a grocery store where I went inside to find a rag that no one wanted. The lady behind the cashier stand was NOT helpful in the slightest. She was rather annoying. Dad did get one from a guy behind the butcher counter who was very nice. When we were on the road again, we noticed the roadside became greener and the sunflowers were more abundant. We passed a little German town that had a sign on a pond that read "Sewage Legoon Keep Out" Lagoon is not spelled "legoon" people. Okay...continuing on....we saw this guy named Brandon (who we keep seeing all over the place) a little ways down the road and chatted with him a little. Just after cresting a hill, a semi truck with an oversized load came towards us. Any guesses on what was on it? If you guessed silo, you are correct!

Getting ready to leave	Humongo cinnamon roll
This is so true...	Natalie wants to be left there now...

We paused again before we got to Mott and answered some of Brandon's questions. Apparently, he is a blogger for the Pratt Tribune, a small town in Kansas. Some of his stories are really interesting and he said he was going to write one about us. We rolled into Mott and found the motel we were staying in was still cleaning the rooms so we went into town to find a place to eat. We ate at the Pheasant Cafe and Lounge on the cafe side where we ordered a salad (sub the ham for chicken), a BLT, chicken fillet, and a ham and egg sandwich. The food took a while to get there but it was pretty good. When we tried to pay, however, we found out that the chicken substitute was an extra $2.75 for the dark meat they put on there. And they tried to charge us $10 more (accidentally) than they should have.

We walked down to the drug store to look around where Natalie got a postcard and then onto the Pedal Tractor museum thing. It had all of these tractors, some with extensions on them and some were even pink (Natalie wanted one of those). We got our stuff from the luggage pile and then headed over to the Mott Motel to do laundry. Natalie worked on hers after I did mine and Dad's (I always seem to get stuck with the extra work (: )

We went to get dinner at the park where the town was serving turkey (a lot of dark meat) along with pasta salad, potato salad, and dessert. It was fairly tasty. Natalie and I went to swing on the swings (big surprise there XD) that were in the middle of a cat litter box. Oh excuse me, I mean sand pile. Yeah, that's just wonderful!

We headed back to the motel shortly after awhile and everyone (not dad) was watching the Gummy Bear youtube video while I was putting away clean clothing. Tomorrow's a long one but good winds are predicted!

The Sewage Legoon	Natalie's face with the combine catching us
Combine running riders over...not really but it sure looked like it	The Mott Motel
Pedal Tractor Heaven	Dad pointing to one he had in the 50's
What is she doing???	Okay, no more weird...

You know those days when you don't want to get out of bed? Yeah. That's what life seems to be like anymore. As you can foresee, I did have to get up. Ugh. Not fun. We dumped our stuff on the truck and then ate breakfast at the Knights of Columbus building. This building is very interesting. When you come in there is a painting of the Pope and on the door next to it is a sign with a Miller Lite bottle. Weird.... so we ate a delicious breakfast before heading off to receive our tailwind. But that tailwind was only about 2 mph. Not much help for a quad...

After being buzzed, our ears blown off by a truck, and the pretty scenery passing by, we arrived in Regent, home of a former school that now looks like a castle. The inside was AMAZING with knights, armor, decor that fit the times, and the pillows in the rooms had chocolate on them! For only $90, I would totally stay there. The old school building was transformed but they kept the gym for guests to enjoy. We stopped at the Cenex and drank a soda before going onto the Enchanted Highway. Let me explain about this. The Enchanted Highway has sculptures every 4 miles or so that are HUGE! Okay, so we had to stop at every single one of the 7 to get our piece of paper stamped to enter the drawing for a free CANDISC next year. The list goes as follows (right after the pictures) :

Bug eyes!	Breakfast
Princess Leia...of the oranges...	Okay...

The Knight Hotel!	Knight in shining but battered armor
The entrance	Natalie thinks she looks like one...

This sculpture was very tall to say the least. The family, featuring a madre, padre, and niño, was made out of metal and wire. The stamps for these were ridiculous. They were essentially ink blobs. This particular piece of artwork was not my favorite but there was free water.

This sculpture was made of wire and kind of looked like a light up Santa, according to Natalie. I thought this one was awesome but then again, everyone else didn't seem to like it quite as much.

When we pulled up to this one, a car was being pulled over by a cop and the guy's wife jumped out of the car and started to take pictures of the huge metal birds. I think she didn't want to deal with the local law enforcement....

The birds were huge and the pictures we took turned out okay. They were see through. The birds. Not the pictures. Okay, moving on...

Tin Dudes!	This thing is ginormous
Teddy Rides AGAIN!	Wooden horsies attract flies..
Why, it looks like dinner!	Maybe not...

This one was Natalie's favorite but they were all fish! There was one fishie that I did like a whole lot and had this look of OH! on his face. He looked weird. Anyway, this stop was also a sag so we ate egg salad sandwiches and stole, I mean won, some pinwheel thingies.

These were just weird giant insects. Okay, infestation going on here... They were, again, made of metal and ginormous. We took our picture by these with Dad and I propping up the camera with a discarded piece of plastic.

When we were coming up to the Deer Crossing, we realized we had a flat tire. Lucky for us, the sag wagon had a pump we could use and as we were fixing the tire, the Rory stories started to come out from the sag driver. One was that Rory fixed a bike in the dark and he knew where everything was by touch and sound. Another one we heard last year was that the rider hit a bump so hard that it knocked the air out of the tire. There was no hole to be found in the tube.

This sculpture was again huge with little geese lining the gravel road going up to it. Yup. Gravel. I seriously did not want to ride/walk up that steep hill that must go for a mile. We took some pictures and in my opinion they came out better because they were farther away (rather than right next to it). On the way back down, some guy was saying that a grasshopper ate through his handlebar tape. Um. Yeah, I don't think so.

Fish	Nat the Cat by the cattails...get it...cattails...oh never mind....
My favorite fish....	Smile!
Natalie really likes these things	Expert photography by timer
Flat tire :(	Deer
Flying Geese	The sculpture

We rode for quite awhile, after turning and losing our tailwind, we stopped at a nursery, of all things and pushed the "Pepsi" button on the machine with it popping out a Gatorade. Ooookkkkkaaaaayyyyyy...at least the Mountain Dew side of the machine worked okay. We went inside and this place was actually really neat. They had some metal butterflies and an awesome set of earrings, which I am now the proud owner of, that are red Converse shoes. PERFECT! Natalie and I split a mango smoothie while Julie drank down a blueberry pomegranate. When we decided to leave, the wind had kicked up even more and the last march into town was what one might call a death march. In rider terms, not fun. The wind was crazy but when we finally got into town, I started to remember more about the place from an earlier year. We pitched our tent and walked over to the shower truck to rinse off. After that, we stood around for thirty or more minutes watching to see if a cow would poop on our chosen square. Great. So this thing is supposed to poop on one of the squares you paid $2 for each and you win everyone's money. We lost. Failure.

We rode into town on the golf cart taxi service and decided to eat at the Pizza Pantry. It was really good although the wait was a bit long and the breadsticks we paid $3 for were not up to snuff. Even Fazolie's has better breadsticks that are free. We ate our delicious pizza and then Natalie and I split a chocolate malt. We walked down to a bar that wasn't smoky and drank a Squirt soda. YUM! As our last trick, we walked back to the tents only to find one rain fly wasn't up. Putting those up in the dark is hard. Okay, so we went to bed and immediately the trains started to roll through, blaring their horns. Even on their brochures, they warned us about the trains running in the middle of the night but their 10pm curfew siren didn't go off. I guess they were trying to be nice but I don't think anyone got a good nights sleep.

Smoothie	A cold treat
Waiting for a cow named Yolanda to poop on our square	Yolanda being terrorized by insane bicyclists

GOOD MORNING! Fancy a train? Last night, as predicted did not go so well. Julie woke up at each of the 5 (or more) trains rolling through and I woke up some although once I'm out, I'm out. We woke up to quite a few people who were taking down their tents although I don't think anyone realized we are no longer on Mountain time like we have been for the last couple of days. We ate breakfast the town served and then slowly picked our way to the first stop. That part of the ride was wind, and more wind. That's about it. When we did finally reach the first town, we briefly got off the bike so everyone could take a potty break, except me. Once we were on the road and turned north, the miles seemed to fly. The trucks on this stretch were annoying as they buzzed close to the bikers on the road. While riding, I ended up changing out my intercom headset because it was crackling. After riding 18 miles, we were looking for a bathroom for Natalie who proclaimed the need to go. We were looking for the non existent convince store when Natalie decided she would go behind a hay bale. Classy.

Just a few miles away was Beulah. We stopped at a Subway that was packed and heard from a sag wagon driver that the roads ahead had "beautiful shoulders". Okay, filled with grit that is. There were a lot of trucks on this road and it didn't help that we were off on the shoulder somewhere. The last couple miles were pretty much down hill, which was nice but the wind was still threatening to rip us to shreds. We pulled into town and grabbed our luggage before heading off to the motel. Dad and I went in search of liquids to drink down at a grocery store after asking someone where it was. He did not know what he was talking about though since the it had moved. We did eventually find it and after we got back, Natalie and I walked to the pool that was right down the street. There was a slide there and even at the pool, Rory had some fan members there. Okay, I really need to find where I can get one of those groups... After I dried off, we went back to shower and eat some queso before going next door to a steakhouse for dinner. The food was pretty good and so were the prices plus there was plenty to eat. You guys should take my food reviews seriously! I mean I know what I am talking about, obviously... :3

We retired to the motel room where Natalie was trying to get Dad to dream of cats after he fell asleep. I helped by acting as a gun. You know what they say, a good cat is a dead cat. Actually they can grow on people...my friend's cat, Mr. Fluffles is awesome. He is like a mini lion, only gray.

Tomorrow is the last day (le tear) but there is the delicious food by the townspeople of Garrison to look forward to.

Descent to Beulah	This is GENIUS!
Le bags... We beat all these people in	WEEEEEEE!
Acting all innocent....yeah right	WUT?
The restaurant	EXTRA PANEL SORRY ABOUT THAT! But I will say I am a moose. Really. Nope. Just kidding... I'm hungry...time for dinner...chicken...no ham...ew yuck, I don't like ham...let's see...chicken it is.... we avoid beef...it's not what's for dinner.

Good morning folks! Our rain chances are rising rapidly this morning for those who are riding on CANDISC. Please feel free to contact the weather station for updates on current wetness condition. So this morning was certainly interesting enough...it looked like rain! With them upping the chances of rain to 70% late last night, dad walked the several blocks to the campground, while the rest of us slept, to rummage through our bags in the dark searching for warm clothes and our raingear. We loaded up our gear and put on the mini panniers before taking off to a Cenex where we ate ice cream and breakfast biscuits for our morning meal. The ice cream was free thanks to a coupon for the riders and we enjoyed (well, Natalie did more than anyone) it for the most part. We got going with a heavy southeast cross wind and finally made it to the turn where we started rocking and rolling for miles. We made it across the Garrison Dam and stopped for our first rest break at 25 miles. The Mountain Dew we split was good although it did chill us down just a bit on this cool morning. We rode into the storm (not really just towards it) and on to Garrison but went though a flight path of some killer honeybees and Dad ended up getting attacked by 8 or 9 of the stupid things but thankfully no stings. We came into Ft. Stevenson State Park where we packed up the van the first thing, as it began to sprinkle. We took showers before heading over to accept our lunch of buffalo brats, pasta salad, lemonade and dessert. It was cold and raining!

The drive was just as boring as usual and I had to do homework...yuck. We stayed in a Motel 6 in Fargo that is really beginning to look rundown, just by the people staying there. As Julie said, you pay the price, or you roll the dice....

Breakfast of champions	Ice cream...
Julie's happy	The lookout onto the downhill run before we reach Garrison Dam
Lunch	Freezing our butts off...

This tour winds to a close and I am here to say a big THANKS to everyone who read this! I love the feedback!