Wow, I can hardly believe we're in Fargo ND tonight. It sounds so exotic...really, I never thought I would have a reason to visit North Dakota.
Today we rode for 4 hours, and covered 57 miles, using a state highway that parallels the interstate. The wild, rolling hills soon gave way to some very flat country with gigantic fields.
An ethanol refinery with tank cars on the rails. We see a lot of new tank cars.
These are the rolling hills- we were on a gravel road for a couple of miles.
Ok, here you see the hills are no more. It was pancake flat all the rest of the way.
This is how you know you have a huge tailwind. The speedo reads 19 mph on a level road.
I was joking about finding the local barista to fix an espresso. We found this truck stop and it sufficed. They had home-made cookies, pies and such so we got some cookies to go.
In short order we pulled into Barnesville and had lunch there. There was not a lot of activity in Barnesville. Note the cloudless sky.
Leaving Barnesville, the road was closed for construction, other than to local traffic. Our policy is that any road closed to auto traffic must be a bike path. It was an excellent one. We even got a friendly wave from one of the highway workers. Although this usually works out, one time with Pete and Sue in Pennsylvania, we took a closed road and the bridge over the river was completely missing.
After 7 or 8 miles of our very own 40' wide "bike path" we had to share the road with cars again. As you can see, traffic was light and you could see 3 miles down the road.
It is shockingly flat. We were loving the tailwind.
Our afternoon ice cream stop was at a retro general store in Sabin, MN. They had an unbelievable selection of artisanal soda pop. This is all soda:
We're staying at the Radisson downtown in Fargo, two blocks from a highly-rated bike store where we bought new gloves and consulted with the shop employees on a good route through ND.
The bike shop is in what used to be the train station.
Marie took me out to Toscana, just a block from the hotel. The entire main street of Fargo was filled with collector cars and hot rods. Every Thursday, Fargo hosts the equivalent of "cars and coffee" except they take over the entire central business district. I probably took 50 pictures but I will only show you a few now. The De Soto is very similar to the one Marie's parents bought in 1958.
Sorry I was preoccupied with the cars instead of capturing the street scene; this was the place to be. In addition to the parked cars, vehicles of all ages and in all states of restoration or modification were cruising up and down Broadway.
What fun!