Day 21 (June 4). Dakotas. Dakotas and more Dakotas.

From: Wall, SD

To: Bismarck, ND

Miles today: 376

Total miles: 5242

Cleared 5000 miles. 

It was overcast all day, heavy clouds, but it never rained.  I am beginning to suspect that when it is cloudy it is not as windy. Yay clouds! Nonetheless I wore my rain gear all day as a windbreaker.  It worked out fine.

The Dakotas seem to be all hills.  I don’t know why I thought they were flat. And they are green, green, green, at least in early June.  Some farms, but mostly black cows grazing on this delicious grass.  I ate part of one for dinner tonight, knowing that it must have died happy. The Dakotas are, as expected, sparsely populated.  Lots of exits with signs that read “No Services.” Lots of signs that read “Next Services 53 miles.”  In a lot of these in-between places there is no cell phone service at all.  At times like this I am pleased that I have established utter confidence in the Honda NT700VA.  All it does is run.

From Wall, SD, I headed east on US 14 to Philip, where I picked up SD 73 north.  I took this through the towns of Howes, Faith, and then the Grass River National Grasslands to Lemmon.  I’m not sure what the deal is with the phrase “National Grassland.”  It looked like everything else for miles around, including the black cows grazing on it.  All of the roads were two-lane highway, which I had almost entirely to myself.  Some of the larger trucks coming the other way would create a brutal shock wave effect like a small bomb, but this happened only a couple times an hour.  You glance down and the speedometer says 80.  

In Lemmon, no more than a couple of miles south of the border between South and North Dakota, I stumbled on to the Grand River Museum. Dinosaur fossils collected from a local ranch (which in these parts can be huge.)  I walk in – no admission charge – and talk to the nice lady who is one of the owners.  She shows me some of their best pieces; here she is with a Triceratops frill.  Her husband takes people out to dig in the ancient river bed (now a steep hill) on their property every summer.  Amazing finds.

My hostess with bones found on the family ranch.  All of these are real, not replicas.

Finally it dawns on me: they are Creationists.  I myself am not; see my web site on the popular essays of the great evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould (sjgouldessays.com). They have a perfectly modern understanding of dinosaur anatomy and seem fully trained in modern excavation techniques.  They care just as much about dinosaur fossils as I do.   They just believe that these critters are 6000 years old, coexisting with humans.  They have real T. Rex teeth, and argue that their brittleness is an indication that they were actually vegetarian, as they must be according to their reading of Genesis.  My choice, and it was an easy one, was to focus on the things we had in common.  I donated $20 to their museum and thanked my host graciously on my way out, after exploring for over an hour.

From Lemmon I drove east on US 40, just south of the border, until I hit SD/ND 49 north and crossed into the second to last state I have never been in.  I weaved my way north to I-94, the northernmost Interstate route in the US, and drove east to Bismarck.  That is where I am now. I have an appointment at 9 am tomorrow morning to get my oil changed.  The least I can do for my faithful steed.

The Grand River Museum in Lemmon, South Dakota

Fantastic sculpture in front of the Grand River Museum.  Intended literally?