Wednesday. Beyond the Beginning.
|
Miles |
83.9 |
|
Mph |
14.5 |
|
Max Speed |
28.0 |
|
Route |
To Williston via Arnegard, Alexander, Cartwright, Fairview, and Trenton, with side trips to Ft. Union and Ft. Buford. |
|
Wind |
S10 |
|
Temperature |
60s - 90 |
|
Elapsed Time |
|
|
Clock Time |
7:00 - 2:45 |
We had a busy day ahead, with what turned out to be 84 miles and sight-seeing to boot. It would also be a homecoming of sorts for me, as I'd grown up in Alexander (208 when we moved there, swelling to about 350 during the '80s oil boom, and now down to 216), twenty miles down the road from here. I hadn't biked on these highways for over a dozen years, as that's when Mom and Dad moved away. Even scarier is that the Trinity Lutheran Luther League in Alexander was taking care of the rest stop, and all of the kids would have been born after I'd graduated! :-/
The day started out sort of precariously, with Dad being affected by some intestinal disorders. He was a little hesitant to talk about it at first, but it wasn't too much into the ride when we found out that there were quite a few people not feeling well. Several ended up not riding, and several took "the short cut" to get to Williston. Yet, there were others who were just fine and took the century option, which in reality turned out to be in the neighborhood of 120 miles. Dad's knee was bothering him, so we quickly decided there wasn't anything to gain by riding the century option. After hearing of the total mileage, we (and his knee and our butts) were glad we didn't.
The twenty miles to Alexander rolled off nicely. It almost felt unreal cycling into town. I wanted to soak it all in--past the turnoff to the former Eikren Egg Farm which I'd worked at in high school and college summers; down Jacobson hill from where we'd been able to coast the old '69 Chevy the last 1.5 miles into town (before the regrading of US85 at the beginning of the '80's); past A Butte which juts up out of the prairie on the south end of town (named for the 'A' for Alexander that's on the north side); past the Water Hill (so named because the town's water supply tank is on top of the hill) on the west side of town where I won the slalom sled race many winters ago; and into the city park. Along the west and south sides of the park are two rows of trees between which used to flow a little stream filled from the natural Ragged Butte Spring at the northwest corner of the park. (Actually, it isn't quite natural in that its source is up the hill between the Water Hill and Aasen Butte. It's then piped into town. Some consideration was given a few years ago to bottle the water, but a high sodium content ended that.) Peter and I and several friends spent many summer hours catching frogs and damning up the stream. Maybe there were good reasons it was filled in!
What else do you want to hear about? We're talking of a potential many years of memories here. :-) I spent a good share of the break talking with Murry Kline, my former high school English teacher and current superintendent. It was fun catching up on some local news, but he painted a grim picture for the future of the school. Projections for McKenzie County regarding population in 2010 show a K-12 enrollment of only three dozen students, down from the current 128 (127 when I graduated). Watford City was going to fare better, with "only" a 50% decline. Murry figured Alexander Public School has only six or seven years left. What does that mean? Watford would have the only high school in the county, an area covering 2700 square miles. Maybe it wasn't quite so fun catching up on news. I also found out about the inevitable death of a classmate's father, the implement closing pretty soon, and other symptoms of a small town on the prairie under stress.
Enough sobering news for now. The rest stop had the best spread of food so far on the trip. The Luther League had done a very nice job. Art had his two newest home-built recumbents parked by the spring. Murry thought I should try one out, but I was feeling a little shy with such an audience so declined. :-) After 45 minutes, it was time to loosen up the legs as there were still over sixty miles left to ride. Dad and I took the two block loop around the park and the church and parsonage where I grew up. I couldn't get over how much the trees had grown! The silver leaf maples we'd planted in '76 are huge, and the American Elm I'd won in fourth grade (third place in an anti-smoking poster contest) was as large as its neighboring elms. Across the street in the school parking lot sat the four school buses, the larger being of maybe 42-passenger capacity. In January we'd have a week of winter celebration and some years grades 7 through 12 would pile into two of the buses and head up to Williston for an afternoon of bowling. Darold's traditional math lesson for all seventh graders on that day was how to keep score in bowling, of course! :-) Yes, there are plenty of memories and tangents to follow...
We headed north out of town, up the "big hill" of three blocks or so which didn't seem quite as long and steep as I'd remembered. At the top is the old school which now houses the Alexander Trail Museum. A mile up the highway we passed Ragged Butte on the east, where Phillip, Peter, and I spent many afternoons working on our fort, harassing ant hills, and other youthful activities. The next mile was a descent down to the 2 Mile Corner, where the less-than-healthy continued heading straight north to Williston. The rest of us headed west toward Montana on ND200.
A couple of miles down the road we passed what is an unusual sight for western North Dakota--corn fields and a silo. The parents of a classmate of mine have a dairy farm in the midst of all the small grain farms and beef cattle ranches. Not too far away is a hog farm, another odd item for the area. (That's not to say that the egg farm I worked on wasn't a little unusual!)
Somewhere along the way we ended up in a pace line, which grew to maybe half a dozen of us. It sure made the miles fly! Eventually Dad and I dropped back, being a little uncomfortable among strangers in such a line.
There was road construction at the Yellowstone River. The existing bridge is being replaced with a new, wider structure, and the existing will be torn down. We stopped at the bridge to check things out, and once again admire the railroad lift bridge on the other side of the new bridge. The
lift bridge was built in 1913-14 after river boat traffic had ceased on the Yellowstone, but it was mandated that one of the spans be capable of lifting to give proper clearance. It is rumored to have been lifted only once, and that only to test it. Burlington Northern abandoned the line in '86, and efforts are being made to preserve the bridge from demolition. Another interesting item is that heading east off the bridge is the only railroad tunnel in North Dakota. The tunnel isn't straight but actually curves, and walking through it (which we've done more than once years ago) you're immersed in total darkness halfway through when neither end can be seen. We saw a few cyclists walking across the bridge. It would have been fun to do that for old time's sake, but we kept going.On the other side of the river was the next rest stop. We rode by it just as an ambulance was pulling out. We later found out that a cyclist hadn't been able to keep anything down in Watford, but decided to ride anyway. His situation never improved and he collapsed from dehydration. He spent a night in the hospital in Sidney and rejoined the group in New Town.
Back to the riding, we caught up to a couple that Dad recognized from past rides--a couple from South Dakota who met on the first CANDISC in '93, and from what I recall him saying is that they were married the next year and spent their honeymoon on CANDISC. We rode together until we were just outside Fairview, and the century riders split off and headed into Montana. They kept going and we turned north. We stopped to put on the sun screen (a novelty as it was the first time all week we needed it :-), and after a bit we saw the couple coming our way! They'd just ridden to the Montana border to get a picture taken by the sign. We weren't feeling quite as wimpy any more. We rode with them in the Yellowstone valley with a tail wind, up until we crossed the Missouri and into some wind, and then we pulled ahead.
The next stop on our agenda was a couple of miles to the west of the designated route:
Fort Union. The fort was built in 1828 as the principle fur trading post on the upper Missouri and was active until 1867 (as compared with nearby Fort Buford that was built as an army post, using lumber from the dismantled Fort Union). Almost as soon as we turned west we could see the fort. A good portion of it has been reconstructed, and its whiteness is quite visible on the prairie. (An added bonus of taking this side trip was a very brief excursion into Montana of just a few feet, even though the fort is in North Dakota.) There were a few cyclists there (including Doyle and Kevin, and a woman drawing a blue foot on the path with chalk, which sort of explained the ones we'd seen on the road earlier in the day) but the parking lot was virtually empty.
The reconstruction consists of the walls and the primary focus of the original fort--the Bourgeois House. The house has been authentically recreated from the outer appearance, but the inside houses a modern visitor center with exhibits from the area. I was a little surprised to see the modernness, having expected the interior to be comparable to the exterior. The Trade House has also been constructed, which sits between the double wall entrance to the fort. This allowed the inner doors of the fort to be closed while trade continued. If the outer doors had to be closed, a small door similar to that of a ticket booth's allowed trade to still continue.
After the site seeing, rehydration (it was getting warm!), and a bagel apiece, we headed for Fort Buford. On the way we met a few more cyclists heading toward Union. It's a neat feeling seeing people using bikes as transportation out on the prairie, "in the middle of no where." (Actually, we weren't in the middle of no where, but we could see it from there. :-)
On the way to Buford, we passed a site I remember wanting a picture of from many years back: the government sign announcing the Buford National Forest, standing next to the only tree for miles around. :-)
Shortly after passing the forest, we turned south, meeting only one cyclist. Buford seems to be the neglected fort of the two, with the only exhibit the original officers' quarters. We parked our bikes next to the white picket fence, and went inside. We found out that there was a charge to go through the small museum, so we opted to watch the free ten minute video instead. About that time Kevin came in, found out about the charge, and left. There was too much history to do justice in the few minutes we felt we had to spend there. I do remember one item that fascinated me years ago--a recipe for Mud Coffee, or some such name. It began with "get a bucket of Missouri River water, preferably let it settle a bit...." (A nickname for the Missouri is Big Muddy, and I'll let it be a reader exercise as to what the Little Missouri River is called.)
Speaking of the rivers, one of the prime reasons for the locations of the forts is that they're at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. Steamboats heading up either were thus able to take advantage of the forts. An oddity of this particular stretch of the rivers is that they're home to a rare fish--the
Paddle fish. The only way to catch one is to snag it with a large hook, as it won't bite the traditional hook.Back to biking, we took off again and once we got back on the route, we didn't find much in the way of action. A long day like this really spreads the cyclists out, especially with the century option, and sites to see along the way. The next rest stop was the local store in Trenton, and I was more than ready to get there. I'd properly rehydrated at Fort Union, and we'd already passed through the Buford National Forest....
From Trenton we headed up out of the Missouri River Valley with the last (and first, actually) big climb of the day. The wind was at our backs, the sun was quite hot, and the sweat started rolling on that hill! Once we got to the top, we were ready to be in Williston (13,131). We soon turned east on US2, now fighting a strong cross wind, fatigue, sore butts, etc., so the last miles into Williston were quite tiring, including the last four mile descent into the valley.
When we arrived at Davidson Park, we were surprised to see as many people there as we did, but later found out that several had sagged all the way from Watford City and others had taken US85 straight up from Alexander. Some sort of flu had hit CANDISC. It was never really figured out if it was some food poisoning in Watford, or just a bug brought in by a cyclist. Anyway, it dampened a few spirits.
Setting up camp was pretty routine by now--find the shade, get the tent set up, take turns showering, and then nap or read or just hang out until supper. I'd had my heart set on Bonanza for several days, so we hiked there for the endless salad bar, beef, and desserts. As we were just getting into line, don't you suppose an old friend from Alexander stopped in with his care worker. Paul Berge is now living in Williston, and with age and failing eye sight, needs a little assistance. He (and his deceased wife Tilda) had been members of Trinity Lutheran. He was really tickled to see us! And while we were eating, Darold and Ida from Watford City happened to come along too. Heck, including the couple of tables of CANDISCers, we knew half the people in the restaurant! :-)
We overdid the eating, so extended the walk back to camp via a detour to the old Family Thrift store. It had been the modern equivalent of the small town general store--groceries, clothing, hardware, whatever you needed. It's now called Econofoods, but it was nice to see the same concept still in place inside. And, we ran into Greg Paluck, another person formerly from Alexander. He'd wanted to ride CANDISC, but some leg problems and surgery had slowed him down a bit. We gave him encouragement for next year's ride.
That pretty much wrapped up the day, other than getting disturbed during the night by a few firecrackers going off!
