What a day, What a day!
It started out fast thanks to a slight downhill so we made good time to lunch, which was in Wall, SD. Unfortunately, our lunch stop was 2.5 blocks from Wall Drug and no wanted to take the short detour with me so all I have is a picture of a sign for Wall Drug. Not that big of a deal since I’ve been there before, but it still would’ve been fun.
After lunch we made our way to the Badlands. Holy cow! Badlands National Park is even more beautiful than I remembered. We took our time making our way through the park, stopping to take a ton of photos and just enjoy the scenery. In addition to the amazing rock formations we saw one lone bison, lots of prairie dogs, and big horn sheep. I took so many photos it was hard to choose which ones to post.
After we left the Badlands the riding got tough. We ended up with some nasty wind, both head and cross. The head wind was actually better because we could take turns fighting it while the others got a rest in the slipstream. The cross wind was just brutal and we fought is for a good hour and half. And on top of the cross winds we had a bunch of rollers that added up to at least 1500 ft of elevation gain. By the end we were all toast.
We also lost one of our riding buddies today, but hopefully it is just temporary. In the middle of the night he went to the emergency room with a kidney stone. Turns out the stone was too large to pass on its own so he had to have a procedure today. Lucky for him we were in a decent size town when it happened because right now we’re in a town with a population of 600. And our guides are taking very good care of him. One of them is going back tonight to pick him up from the hospital. He’ll take a couple days off to recover and then plans to rejoin us on the bike. That’s one tough guy!
One more long, hard day before we get two sub 80 mile days in a row.
Day 21 stats:
distance: 112.73 miles
elevation gain: 4229 ft
nutrition:
breakfast: eggs, potatoes, pineapple, danish, NuGo protein bar
lunch: PB&J, potato salad, melon, cookie
post-ride: 1 recovery drink, Kate's chocolate mint bar, 1 small coke
gels: 5
bloks: 1
104 oz skratch superfuel, 52 oz zym, 26 oz water
other: 1 small coke
Day 22 details - Kadoka to Oacoma
planned distance: 115 miles
planned elevation gain: 3334 ft