Thursday – South Dakota Has a Tail?
Thursday morning broke with some sunshine, enough to dry out the tent before packing it away. All the gear had survived the torrential rain and blasting wind without a problem, including the garbage bag encased riding suit.
The next target was southern Illinois. There was an IBMC campout in Ramsey that would break up the (mostly) dull ride back East. Being just shy of a thousand miles away I figured I’d try to get 600 miles out of the way this day leaving a nice “under 400″ day for tomorrow. The route was dead simple – 90 East to 29 South, all superslab. There isn’t much to see in eastern South Dakota and I settled into the highway cycle of ride, refuel, ride, refuel. Entering Sioux Falls it felt good that the day’s halfway point was near. I would soon realize that the boredom of eastern South Dakota could only be surpassed by the seemingly endless stretch of highway south on route 29.
When I’m on the interstate with the sole purpose of covering as many miles as possible I find myself picking an arbitrary point on the GPS and tracking my progress as the small blue arrow slowly creeps its way across the screen. State lines are an obvious marker, as are rivers, large cities, interchanges, and so on. The minute I turned south onto 29 the next logical marker was the Iowa state line. My Garmin Nuvi allows the customization of the display so instead of a small blue arrow representing “me”, I’ve set the pointer to be the chick on the little red scooter, the one with the light blue helmet. No, I don’t believe this is due to suppressed emotions or some call for help, I just dug the chick on the red scooter.
Like waiting for water to boil, the ice maker to spin a new batch of cubes or the clock to hit 5, the Iowa border just seemed to keep evading my scooter. I finally backed the GPS view out so I could see the South Dakota state line and much to my surprise I found that SD has a damn tail! Now, I live in a tail state – Connecticut, so I am familiar with the whole concept. Hell, we even have a notch cut out of the top of us due to poor surveying and 1740 tax disputes. Prior to this trip I lumped South Dakota into one of those square states like Colorado, Wyoming and even their neighbor to the north, North Dakota. Yet there it was.
Eventually, the light blue helmet made it to Sioux City. It was hot. I pulled off the first exit where I could see the Missouri River and parked. I walked down to a boat launch area, peeled off my boots and waded through the muddy brown water.
The day would end in St. Joseph, a bit north of Kansas City and just shy of 600 miles from my start. A Super 8 with a Red Lobster in the parking lot screamed for me to exit off the the highway.
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