Diary

Mileage: 71.5 miles (115 kms)

Elevation Change:  1069 feet (326 meters)

Weather:  sunny and hot

Morale:  great!

Incidents:  went over 2000 miles

Daily Summary:

Great day today!  We were off in the cool of the morning at 6:30, and climbed out of the Missouri River Valley to head due east.  The route was easy (almost totally flat), the weather was reasonable (only 94 degrees), the distance was short , and the tailwind was steady.   Christopher rode for 36 miles to the SAG stop on a single bike.  Ray and I rode into Mitchell, SD.  The scenery is definitely changing.  More crops, more tractors, more water, more farmhouses, more trees, less trailer houses, less desolation.  Mitchell is another western/mid-west hybrid.  We’ve been riding through corn and soybean fields all day, but we’re going to a rodeo tonight.  The big site in town is the Mitchell Corn Palace.  It’s an auditorium/city hall/civic center first built in 1892.  The outside is decorated every year with a different theme, always in corn husks.  They use a dozen different varieties of corn to get different colors.  Quite a site to see.

 

Below you see Ray with two buddies on a corner in Mitchell.  Then, the famous CORN PALACE!