North Dakota: yah, you betcha!

8/16 - Ellendale, North Dakota! (84 miles)
8/17 - Fargo (27 miles)

Well, we weren't actually planning on visiting ND. We just assumed it was a bunch more of SD just a little further north. But we adopted a new bicycle strategy... each morning we would ride in the direction of the wind (as long as it was going north or east). The wind was blowing north very, very hard and so we traveled 180 miles in 2 days w/ little effort. All this wind meant a huge storm was on its way and luckily we met some friendly ND'ers outside a gas station who offered us their living room floor. Thank YOU Keith and Hope (and Keith and Kris). Not only did these nice folks let us sleep in their house and take a bath, but they left us departing gifts: Rachel got a hat from Germany, while Scott now has a sweet canary yellow Fargo, ND t-shirt.















This story sounds familiar ehhh... it is truly amazing how many random nice people invited us into their home. This was truly the unexpected high-lite of the entire trip. You really can't contact a travel agent and say... "I want to travel America, living room to living room". And really, all the living rooms and guest rooms were making us soft. There were many a day, sitting in front of Wal-Mart, we put on our best "please-take-us-home-w/-you" face, but there weren't any takers. And so we would mope back to our bikes and go camp in the bushes behind Wal-Mart (as in the pic below):















...back to ND. While we are thanking people, we owe another big Thank YOU to Kristin & Sirus who drove us from Ellendale to Fargo. We were having tire issues when Kristin stopped and offered to help. We were so tired of the windy ND plains that we really weren't that bummed to skip 100+ miles.















In Fargo we chowed at our first Mongolian BBQ... you can see the aftermath below as Scott collapsed in front of the restaurant. Riding while gorged is not fun, but we somehow made it to a nearby soy bean field where we slept for 17 straight hrs (waiting out the rain). Fargonians didn't really like the fact that most people associated them w/ the movie and humans getting shredded in mulchers. In fact, Fargo was actually filmed in Brainerd, Minnesota. Regardless, we just loved to hear them talk... cuz they really do talk different.

YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN'!