This morning we had our usual breakfast and chatted with our delightful hosts, Andy and Madeline (she arrived late last night). We pushed off at 7:30 am and headed east on US Hwy 2 toward Nashua. We thought a second breakfast awaited us there but, alas, the place had closed. We biked on toward Wolf Point, past wheat field after wheat field. Along the way we passed a pond (one of many) and saw our first yellow-headed blackbirds of the trip.
About 5 miles after passing by Frazier and Oswego, I had a flat back tire. After removing the wheel from the bike and loosening the tire casing, Betsy found a quarter-inch long piece of wire poking thru the casing. She extracted it with her tweezers (an essential tool for this job). We installed a new tube and, with lots of effort, finished the repair. We biked into Wolf Point for lunch at a sad set of roadside tables. Then we went grocery shopping and to the tire store to top off the air in my tires.
We headed southeasterly on Hwy 25, then south on Hwy 13 and crossed the wide Missouri River (see photo). After climbing a hill, we biked south with a mild tail wind past more wheat fields. On a hill, an overtaking semi steered overly wide of us, causing an approaching guy in a pickup to drive partly off the road. The driver turned around and caught up with us. He was livid that we were biking in the road surface and not the shoulder (narrow with a rumble strip). We continued on for 6 miles to Vida, a tiny hamlet. We camped behind the Catholic Church as recommended by Andy. Gangs of mosquitoes greeted us. The bugs and the wind encouraged us to eat dinner in the local bar. We chatted with the folks and ate hamburgers and pizza plus beer. It was a long day with 71.3 miles accomplished.
