LITTLE MISSOURI NATIONAL GRASSLAND (BUFFALO GAP): The Fifth Annual Local Wine Review

August 18, 2017

Before I get into the wine tasting, perhaps I should write a little bit about my day up to this point. It was another very good one.

It began with me heading west out of Belfield on "Old Highway 10" which ran parallel to Interstate 90. The interstate was visible to my right almost the entire stretch. From my perspective, Old Highway 10 seemed hillier than the interstate, but there's no question it was quieter. I saw five cars in five miles. I saw at least four times that number of hawks, but only one of them provided me with a photo opportunity.

Like all of the other hawks I've seen, this one flew off as soon as I tried to aim my phone at it. UNlike all of the others, he flew TOWARD me so I got this picture.

Since he was kind enough to circle around once again, I got this one too.

Eventually I had to get onto the Interstate. It wasn't so bad. In fact, it wasn't as busy as my companion for the previous days, Highway 85. I rode it for about five miles in order to take a break at a very important rest area.

The Painted Canyon Visitor Center, a part of Theodore Roosevelt's national park, has special meaning to my wife, The Feeshko, and me. We stop there every time we drive to and from her parents house in Spokane, WA. The first time was in 1982--a year before we were married. Our kids and our dog have been there with us many times. It's a tradition. Plus, Painted Canyon is beautiful.

[Oh no! I'm getting a sentimental tear in my eye as I write this at my campsite picnic table. I better move on to the next subject.]

A picture of one's bike by a national park sign is a necessary component of any good touring journal.

The views of the Painted Canyon badlands are so big and so spectacular that my measly pictures do no justice to them at all . . .

Two couples came up to me while I was at the Visitor Center. They had seen my bike and began asking questions about my trip. I don't mind getting the same questions all the time. My problem is that the questioners get so amazed and complimentary that I start feeling a sense of embarrassment, as if I'm bragging too much. I try to explain that a bike trip is not all that amazing but, still, I wonder if they can see right through my fake humbleness.

I headed back out onto the highway before I really wanted to. I needed to escape before any other people came to chat. I prefer to keep to myself.

I didn't get too far before I heard some crazy chirping sounds. I stopped on a fast downhill to look around and discovered the chirping was coming from a prairie dog town alongside Interstate 90. Had I been driving a car at North Dakota's legal speed of 75 miles per hour, I would never have seen nor heard the prairie dogs and their crazed chirping. Lewis and Clark called them "Barking Squirrels" and I could see why.

There were hundreds of prairie dogs and they were acting all cocky and tough as they barked at me from a safe distance. Yet, when I got closer, they scurried off into their burrows like little frightened little kittens. I took a couple of pictures of the prairie dog town, but I cannot display them because I had to zoom-in so much that they came out shamefully distorted.

The next stop was the tourist town of Medora. I'm often intrigued at how little towns with permanent populations of a couple hundred people are able to cash in on their natural assets. They create a theme and the tourists come in droves. In Medora, it's an "old west" theme. The town has fake "mercantiles" and "saloons" and Ponderosa-style buildings straight off the set of Bonanza. Tourists numbering into the thousands on any given day come here to be entertained by all that stuff. I see them walking the streets and I can't help but wonder if they even notice the natural beauty.

Look! A mercantile. Now I can pick up some feed for the herd, some salt pork, and some new spurs.

Ben Cartwright would have known that the backdrop of sandstone cliffs is the only authentic theme around here.

North Dakota tourist brochures call this "The Scenic Little Missouri River." I call it "The Sickly Little Missouri River."

I had to get another badlands fix, so I visited the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I rode on ITS Scenic Drive for a few miles and also spent some time at its interpretive center.

This cabin is called The Maltese Cross. My friend, Teddy Roosevelt, lived here.

I could have taken a hundred badlands pictures, but I limited myself to this one featuring my bike.

My campsite tonight is back in the awesome Little Missouri National Grasslands. Except for the crickets and grasshoppers, it is incredibly quiet here. There is beauty in simplicity and I luxuriated in it: Grass. A few shrubs and small trees. A curious rabbit. Lying in the sun almost naked on the picnic table. NO BUGS! Only $6.00. And there is water. I can think of no better setting for sampling a North Dakota wine and writing my review.

This little bunny watched me for several minutes without moving. I talked to it in my friendliest voice, but it was too shy to get any closer.

That hill was practically daring me to climb it.

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THE FIFTH ANNUAL BIKE TOURING REVIEW OF A LOCALLY PRODUCED WINE. -By Mr. Nice Guy

Hello wine enthusiasts! I'm back with another non-biased, non-paid, non-pretentious wine review by a non-wine drinker.

In my opinion, there could be no more appropriate place to purchase a North Dakota wine than in a liquor store attached to a gas station in Medora, North Dakota. From reading the label, I knew I had found the perfect vintage. I loaded the bottle onto my bike and lugged it six miles to this awesome campsite, and I'm here to tell you I had quite the unique wine tasting experience.

Have you ever seen a totally negative wine review in one of those food and wine publications? Neither have I. (Likewise, have you ever seen a negative bicycle review in a cycling magazine?) If those publications are your only source of wine-related information, you might start thinking that ALL wines are equally delicious, to the point that the reviews become meaningless. It's like one of my former co-workers who proclaimed every movie he watched was "awesome." Well, I'm not going to play that game this time.

With that being said, I must say this "Historic Medora Chokecherry Wine" has unique character and structure. Oh yes! Its character is as evil and psychotic as Dennis Hopper's character in the film Blue Velvet, and its structure is about as sound as the straw house in The Story of the Three Little Pigs. It has some degree of acidity, but it's the kind of acidity that eats away at your gut.

All I can think of when I sip this reddish liquid is, "Oh my god, this stuff sucks!" Don't drink it with cheese. Don't drink it with fish or beef or pork or goat. Don't drink it with a Caesar salad or rice noodles or eggplant parmagiana or shrimp tacos or Kung Pau chicken or liver & onions. It will ruin any food you pair it with. Don't drink it WITHOUT food either, unless you desperately need an awful, awful buzz. Do not serve it to friends on a celebratory occasion. The celebrating will soon become suffering, possibly vomiting, and your friends will never come to your house again.

Please don't pour this wine on the ground. It will kill your grass and will seep into the local aquifer, thereby affecting the taste and smell of your town's water supply. Flush it down the toilet instead so it can join all the other crap at the wastewater treatment plant.

As I poured the wine into my cup, I noticed it had a color I can only describe as "one part blood mixed with four parts Coca Cola.

"What did you think of the wine, G-2?" I asked my cartoon alter-ego, traveling companion, and fellow wine connoisseur.

"I would suggest that they stop calling it a chokecherry wine and start calling it a CHOKE wine."

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Today's ride: 32 miles (51 km)
Total: 185 miles (298 km)

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