Last night, as I was racing to my motel room, I passed by the main street of the town and it looked pretty cool so I wanted to take a picture. I’ve only seen this type of town setup in movies so I wanted to take a picture of it.
I take off on I-90 and eventually, I needed to go to the washroom so I stopped at the next rest stop along with the car that’s in front of me. As we park at the rest stop, they get out. “Hey, didn’t you stay at our motel last night?” It was the goldwing guys. What a coincidence. Looking off into the horizon, I finally see some scenery worth taking a picture of.
I didn’t want to waste too much time at this rest stop, I snapped a few pictures and I took off.
There was a highway exit sign that said "Ghost Town" and I've always wanted to visit a ghost town so I dropped in. I dont think it was a real ghost town as there was a store that said "Closed for the season" but I snapped a few pictures anyway.
I had to cross a bridge that ran over the river and boy did the wind pick up.
It felt like one of those days with heavy winds that I’ve experienced in Toronto. It wasn’t a big deal really, it pushed me around a little but I was still in control. As I travel more West on I-90, the elevation increased along with the wind. At this point, I was in full tuck but I soon realized that it didn’t make much of a difference since my luggage acted like a huge sail anyways. The wind really started to pick up to the point that I was using my whole lane to compensate for the wind. This is when things started to go wrong and I should have recognized this when I was turning left but my bike was leaning to the right. I was attempting to pass a slow moving vehicle so I made my move to the left lane. As I was changing lanes, a huge gust of crosswind pushed me over all the way to the left side of the left lane. I was leaning into the wind and I was probably 20 degrees leaned over into the wind but it kept on pushing me to the left. Soon enough, my wheel crossed over the yellow line and into the rumble strips all the while I was leaned over. I thought this was it. My adventure was over before it even started. It might have been that the car in front got nervous, or it was just a coincidence that he slowed down, but when he did, he blocked the crosswind for one split second which allowed me to get back into my lane. I was really lucky and I wasn’t going to push my luck. I’m stopping at the next exit, I don’t want to crash. The oh crap moment wasn’t caught on camera but I took a video soon after to show how strong the winds were.
If you look closely, you can see the bike rock left and right which is why I tied it down to the ice machine. The wind was so strong that you could not stand straight without being pushed over.
It turns out that I stopped at 1880’s town. What was that? The lady told me that these buildings and artifacts were moved here and supposed to be used for a movie but the producer changed plans, the movie was shot somewhere else. The land owner acquired this town and now it’s a tourist attraction. A lot of these artifacts were also featured in Dancing with the Wolves which I’ve never seen but I’ve heard of. It would have been more interesting if I knew a bit about American history, either way I enjoyed it.
During the self-tour, I noticed that it started snowing…hard. It was more like ice pellets and it would hurt when it hit your face. Apparently this was from a storm system in North Dakota which spilled a huge amount of snow on the ground. I was hoping that this wouldn’t happen here. The nearest town with a motel was 20 miles away and it was still windy. The attendant offered to allow me to leave my bike there overnight, drive me to town, and pick me up in the morning. I was really grateful that they offered but I didn’t want to rely on someone else to take me around especially if I’m on a tight schedule. To pass time while the wind died down, I talked to the attendant at the counter. Everyone who came in first complained about the wind, then saw me with my bike gear and wished me good luck. I needed it.
Eventually the wind died down a little bit but it was still snowing. This was my only chance to make it to town before dark and I didn’t want to take the chance that the wind would get worse. I took the service road over to town and grabbed the first motel. I was a bit hungry so I went to the restaurant across the street. This felt like a big mistake. The first thing I notice is a restaurant full of cowboys. The second thing I notice is that they’re all staring at me like they’ve never seen an Asian before. What have I gotten myself into, this is going to be really awkward…and it was. I ordered my food, played with my phone a bit, and then left.
This pretty much ends my day…made it 300 kms and that was it. I was pretty disappointed in my progress but it wasn’t safe at all to continue. At least I’m close to the Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore. I just hope that it wont be as windy tomorrow. Tonight I’ll be sleeping early and starting my day early tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Btw, I was fast today...
