Vicious Mosquitoes

July 10, 2016

Day Forty: Crawford, Nebraska to Edgemont, South Dakota

It was going to be hot again, so we made another early start. It was nice and cool this time of the day, and the road was quiet — we didn’t see the first vehicle until we’d ridden twelve miles, and traffic would be light all day.

There was a slight headwind from the north this morning. We saw some “twin deer” (Joy’s expression), and of course the always-present cattle, a large group of which ran along with us for a while.

Early mornings are always my favorite time to ride, and this was one of the best mornings of the trip. We entered the Oglala National Grassland, which had a subtle, spare beauty that you’d never notice if you were in a motor vehicle. The sky was a soft blue, and we listened to the birds chirping. We saw some antelope, who watched us for a while before running away. There were occasional trees by the side of the road where we stopped a few times.

Finally we exited the National Grassland, entered South Dakota without a state line sign, and were attacked viciously by mosquitoes. These were the worst mosquitoes I’ve experienced since 2008 in Montana. Fortunately they only lasted a couple of miles, but they were so terrible that I couldn’t even stop and take pictures at the first South Dakota town, Ardmore. In any case there was nothing in Ardmore but some falling-down buildings.

It was hot and sunny as we turned onto a gravel road. Joy occupied herself by counting the cars of a passing train, but trains are one of the few things that I’m not interested in (and I’m normally very, very easily amused.)

We could see on our map that a town called “Provo” was coming up, so that was something mildly amusing to look forward to. Provo, unlike the home of Brigham Young University in Utah, where we lived for a while, was the second junk-pile South Dakota town of the morning. In this case it was literally a junk yard: Most of the community was filled with hundreds and hundreds of junked cars.

It was an easy ride to Edgemont, at the foot of the Black Hills, but it was very, very hot now. After a brief stop at what was surely the least restful campground I’ve ever seen, adjacent to busy railroad tracks, we continued through the wide main street of the town and checked into the Cowboy Inn, which still advertises “Television” and “Fax” as amenities on its signage. The motel was pretty run-down, but the lady running the place was very nice, and handed us two ice-cold bottles of water when we checked in. She also gave us a “Cowboy Inn” bumper sticker, which I still have, and will try to find a use for.

After lunch at a nearly-empty cafe, where I severely startled the waitress (who is apparently even more nervous and jumpy than I am) when I asked for a glass of water, I walked over to the un-air-conditioned “Loads of Fun” laundromat, where I spent a super-hot hour doing that chore, then retired with Joy to our small room for a few hours.

The only dinner choices on this Sunday evening were a couple of convenience stores. Among other junk food items, I bought a pack of Hostess Zingers, and the girl who checked us out told me she’d had Zingers for the first time in her life that very day. What!? How is such a thing possible?

Tomorrow our plan was to start riding through the Black Hills on the George S. Mickelson Trail, an unpaved rail-trail that is over 100 miles long.