2021-08-10 Yankton SD to Pierre SD - 266 miles

It wasn't supposed to be 100 degrees today, especially since we are going north, but it did, at the end of the day, when we pulled into Pierre SD tonight. But it did not seem as humid so as long as we kept moving, it was ok.

First job this morning was to see if one of the three bike shops in town had a throttle lock like the one I have. Dave borrowed mine and now had throttle lock envy. 

We had some time in the hotel to get all the electronics unraveled and working again. We had a mess yesterday but we think it is under control now. 

We did not find a throttle lock, but we did find the person who helped answer a bunch of questions we ave had like, where does all the corn and soy go. When do they harvest it all. The woman in the last shop grew up on a farm and explained everything. More corn, soy and hay than ever before, farms are getting bigger and bigger, corn and hay feed beef animals which used to graze. more feedlots now. I guess things change. But she didn't have the throttle lock..

Next stop was Lake Andes where our cousin Greg and his newly retired wife Charlie live. We texted him to warn him we were coming and arrived a couple hours later in his yard. We did not realize that the lake in front of their house is actually connected to the Missouri River so were in effect standing next to the river. He said you could take a boat 100 miles up the river from the lake. We caught up for a couple hours (thank you Greg & Charlie) and pointed ourselves north to stay as close as possible to the river. Charlie had showed us a picture of the statue of a Native American woman they had put up where interstate 90 crosses the river. We found it and it is amazingly beautiful (see picture above), and huge. We hydrated at the L&C interpretation center next to the statue

and then took the smaller roads on the east side of the river to keep going north. This goes through Indian reservations and is pretty much untouched and very rolling with the river to the west. The river is really wide up here (and due to get wider tomorrow), I assume because there are dams that hold the water back into reservoirs. And no traffic to speak of, but the temperature rose all afternoon.

Lots of hotels so collapsed into air conditioned wonderfulness for an hour, then walked next door to Subway, because it is just too hot to go anywhere else.

Maybe North Dakota tomorrow night. 

Oh yea, Dave claims he said a sign on a motel that claimed "289 days homicide free!!" I am skeptical..

Odometer: 4365-4099=266 miles