beauty of a ride again. patty & denise drove all the way to fargo yesterday afternoon after we got to mayville to scout a good route. they came up with a beauty: primarily back roads, good surfaces, little traffic. & the weather was grand: warm but not hot, light winds. usually it’s no fun riding into a large town, but this was a lark. kudos to denise & patty for their fine scouting work!
i always like to find a photo to take in the early-morning light. i tried for catching our shadows as we pedaled along the road. the early sun caught the hay bales & almost made them glow.
i was standing at the 20-mi sag stop when i saw gloria come to a landing at the stop. this gives you a good idea of how flat & devoid of traffic our roads were.
we stopped when we spotted some horses, especially since there was a colt there with its mom … tho’ i’m not sure she’s the one pictured with him.
these additional horses milling there amongst the junked vehicles were very curious about us bikers.
carol & i both like trains. we stopped to wave & take a photo as a BNSF freight train came toward us. you can see carol’s waving arm along the left edge of the photo. the conductor obliged by tooting his whistle several times. at that point we were riding on a brand-new stretch of blacktop; talk about smooth riding!
at the 2nd sag stop at 40 mi, carol brought out some of the delicious home-made apricot/almond biscotti that her friend mary-love had sent her in a care package. we were very lucky that carol was willing to share. home-made biscotti is a very high-class item for bikers to be enjoying along the road, & this version was scrumptious!
right around noon we made our way into fargo. first stop was the great northern bicycle shop, which is a renovated train station. it’s the epitome of bike shops. gloria, carol, joann & i … after denise took this photo of us with the fargo sign … had a delicious lunch at the shop’s cafe. (i was dismayed that i ate so much lunch that i didn’t have room for gelato from the shop’s gelato bar.) then we walked the 2 blocks to the radisson to check in & to take care of all sorts of chores necessary to get us on the road home in the next day or 2. it already doesn’t seem possible that we’ve covered alost 1500 mi since we left the coast of washington state some 4-1/2 weeks ago. what beautiful parts of our country we’ve enjoyed up close.
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