Memorial Day Weekend

Contrary to the weather guy, we ended up with perhaps the nicest weather ever for the long, three day weekend, even if it did start off on a blustery note, and even if it was unseasonably cool. On Saturday morning, a bunch of us met at the Bike Shop to do a ride early. This was the only "really" windy day. On our way back into town, we detoured through Camden, which was packed to the gills with holiday campers. You could smell the coffee and breakfast cooking on the campfires---I love that!

Sunday we woke up to fairly cool but calm and dry weather. Just before I was about to cook my oatmeal, Mike said, "Hey, Wanna go do that ride in South Dakota...we can stop in Ivanhoe or somewhere else for breakfast?" I put away the oatmeal. Minnesota Dad gave us a bike routes map for South Dakota, we headed to the "Coteau des Prairie" (hills of the prairie), which has a 98 mile network of bike routes for us to explore on.

We packed up our bikes and the small hound and headed a little North and West, stopped in the town of Porter for a $5.58 breakfast for two(!) and rolled along easily over the no-traffic roads. None. This is a really beautiful area. The land isn't all farmed and plowed but rather left in it's original state. The terrain is really rolling...you're either going up or down meandering through the very rolling prairie land and 40+ glacial formed lakes. I saw so many birds & ducks (water fowl galore!)---it's gotta be a bird-watcher's paradise. Hooded Mergansers', egret's, huge white pelicans, mallards, baby ducks, green and teal wood ducks, buff-al head, canvas-back duck, cormorants' and even a Loon! Mike knows them all by name! We rolled along for about 4 hours and I didn't get dropped until the last 15 miles...As we passed the cattle, I would "moo" at them and they'd run away...I think that was around the time Mike decided to ride away. Ha! This was the best riding I've done since we got here---hands down! There was little to no traffic anywhere---even on Memorial day weekend. On the loop we did you could count the cars on two hands in the 4 hours of riding.

Monday - Memorial Day, everyone met at our house to ride. They were planning on doing 80 miles, but after two days of riding with guys, I wasn't looking forward to trying to keep up and so I opted for a slower, solo ride instead. I left about 15 minutes after they did, in the windless morning. I stopped by Mary's house, but she was off to play some golf with her husband and so I continued on towards Russell and then towards Arco before turning around. I got caught by the Taylor foursome (which started as a 6-some...but two of the guys left saying that "happy wives=happy lives"). They ended up doing only 55 miles or so---only 10 miles more than I. But I was really enjoying not hurrying and so I rode a few miles with them and then got dropped on the way into town...

Mike and I got busy making up for all the holiday-time-off-from-jobs when we got home though and washed all the windows (inside and out), washed our bikes, the car, the floors and the clothes. The yard looks fabulous and there is nothing the smell and feel of a clean house. We headed to the Taylor's for a home-cooked BBQ, then to the Olsen's to visit with Rick and Kim and to say good bye to Jeff (Kim's brother) before he headed to his new job in Wisconsin---and then headed home, thoroughly tired and yet rested from the long weekend! Happy Tuesday!