Sunday, July 25, 2010

Day 15 - Badlands and grasshoppers

I gotta keep it short again tonight as we just crossed into central time zone and we have another 140+ day tomorrow.

Things I learned on the bike today:

1.  Read the route sheet before judging the day.  If a route has 4000 ft of climbing over 145 miles it would not be hard unless most of the climbing is in the last 40 miles!
2.  If the t-shirt and route card disagree  - choose the one with the longest mileage and climbing
3. South Dakota is having a grasshopper infestation
4. Grasshoppers don't seem to like landing on you and more than you like them landing on you
5.  Grasshoppers hurt when they hit you in the face going as slow as 5 mph
6.  Grasshoppers really hurt when they hit you going 20 mph
7.  I don't like grasshoppers !


Today was our longest day of the trip - 146 miles.  It was very diverse.  We started pretty flat and rode through "grasslands", then traveled through the very interesting Badlands, and ended up with very rolling hills.  The Badlands are very interesting in that out of nowhere you have these really neat rock formations.  Some of them looked like thick biscuit dough droped into a grass field!


Crooked picture of grasslands


Odd?


Rock formation in the Badlands


Badlands and sunflowers


More Badlands

Hopefully, I will have more time to blog tomorrow!

3 comments:

Bill Mendenhall said...

Of all the things I might have imagined seeing on a bike trip, these are some of the strangest. A dinosaur out in the middle of nowhere? Grasshoppers in your face? Are you sure you're not DWB?

-Bill

Bill Mendenhall said...

Or would that be BWI?

Unknown said...

Word for the day is "Juxtaposition"! Dinasour in a field in 2010! Dry desserty rock formations in green fields. Dry desserty rock formation and beautiful sunflowers. Georgeous cloudlessly smooth vibrant blue sky over roughly jagged dry desserty rocks. GRASSHOPPERS and BIKERS!!!! What an adventure!!!