Spirit Lake to Carrington, ND

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAROL!!!

Miles 49.2
Ride time 3:07
Elevation gain 677'

We left Spirit Lake this morning after a wait for the rain to stop. We had a good downpour this morning. Then it stopped so we headed out. All it took for the rain to stop was for everyone to put on all of their rain gear. We took ours off and put ours in the Sag just in case. Of course the wet roads dirtied up the bikes...we would spend time cleaning them up at the end of the day. It warmed up and turned out to be a pretty nice day, although we didn't have any fun tailwinds. That translated into us having to actually pedal the whole way.
We came upon a sign that said that we were crossing the Continental Divide. It almost seemed like a joke, but we looked it up and it is the northern contiential divide. It seems that it had more to do with land ownership during the fur trading years that an actual geographical feature. None the less, we got the picture to prove it.
The coolest thing we saw today was a herd of Bison. We saw them off to our left in this big pasture. We rode over to look at them. It was a herd of about 20-25. They are enormous. The herd had many young babies and the moms were not all that pleased to have us nearby. They swishes their tails then herded the little ones to the center. They moved away from us as one big tight group. Suddenly, they all started galloping away. It must have been quite a sight to have thousands of them running like that across the plains.
We got into Carrington and found our hotel. We we able to get into our rroms right away. It was great since we were pretty grimey from the wet roads we had ridden on earlier. We cleaned up and went on our food quest. We had a nice meal across the street. Then it was time for bike cleaning. Everyone was doing the same thing. The front of the hotel looked like a bike mechanic convention. I cleaned the grime off my bike, lubed the chain and hope that that will hold me until we get into Fargo. We are winding down. The old bod has held out well