As we left the hotel this morning, Marie said "I feel like we're jumping into the deep end of the pool." I confided my apprehensions in last night's post. We feel like we are headed where the Queen's writ does not run. After you finish reading this post you can decide.
We headed south from Fargo on bike paths for about 10 miles, into a 15 mph S wind. It didn't bother us, though. We were expecting wind. Expectations are so important!
One last glance at Fargo's civic pride.
I never know- should I capture the typical or the unusual for our readers? Marie says "both." Although we used the ACA map today exclusively, it put us on state highway 46, pictured above. Not particularly scenic, not shaded, no shoulder, and a 65 mph speed limit. Notice the rumble strip grooves both on the centerline and the shoulder. They just about shake the handlebars out of your hands, so you have to avoid them. In fairness, there's not much traffic, and most give us a wide berth, but the occasional pickup flying by at 85 that doesn't give us the entire lane is unpleasant.
This picture illustrates the tree wind breaks that are planted around every house and often in the fields. Except for these, it was pretty open and sunny this morning. Marie stopped every 5 miles, it seemed, to slather on more sunblock. A lot of innocent bugs died as a result.
After 30 or 40 miles we finally got a change of scenery.
Those are very gently rolling hills and grasslands. We think we have identified the Prairie Rose. Lots of businesses use Prairie Rose in their name. This looks like a wild rose to us;
Even though we only did 58 miles today, we were glad to be done at 3:30. Utterly flat, straight roads into the wind do not encourage you to move around on the bike so you end up more tired.
The town we are in, Enderlin, is populated by 886 residents. Our motel is surprising nice- quite adequate by any standard. Our dining options were limited on a Sunday night, however, because the town's only cafe closes at 2 pm on Sunday. Fulfilling my promise to always take Marie out to the finest restaurant available, we headed out to the only other open place serving food, Trio Bar.
Don't let the modest exterior fool you. The interior was just as nice.
Our server was apologetic that her deep fryer was out of order so she wouldn't be able to serve us any sides. We didn't mind. We had cheeseburgers that were pretty good- they exceeded expectations. They didn't have any beers on tap, also no local beers and no imports, so we ordered Michelob Lights, which were served to us in cans. However they were ice cold, and it was 84 degrees outside, so they were delicious.
For dessert we visited the convenience store at the City View Fuel station, which had Klondike bars and cookies.
Here's the motel:
Oh, I forgot the street scenes from downtown Enderlin:
It is a holiday weekend but still, it's obvious that the businesses in this town are seriously hurting.
We had planned to go further south off the ACA route tomorrow to find a hotel in Edgeley, but at dinner we decided to head north towards the interstate and end up riding 60 mile days instead of 75 mile days to Bismarck. Today's ACA route was not a particularly pleasant or scenic route. We can probably do just as well making up our own, as we have been doing.