Saturday June 18th, Sunday 19th

Saturday: We woke to what would be an ever windy but sunny day. Ah, when the wind is blowing at you it's going to be a greeeeat day. Not!  The rolling hills of wheat are as green as you can get. When I say rolling hills I mean rolling hills of evilness! Its so discouraging to get to the top of a leg burning, brutal hill only to see  yet another one steeper and longer sticking its tongue out at you. Oh and for all those that told us, "oh don't you worry, its flat out there in South Dakota,"  I beg to differ!
After fighting wind, hills, and a few more broken spokes, we decided to take a break at a totally random baseball field out in the middle of nowhere. I mean seriously it was probably 20 miles to the closest town -really strange!
We made some awesome spaghetti in our little stove adding broccoli to replace the meat. We still had a 30 mile trek into the wind and needed the carbs. As we were going up one of the most brutal hills we broke two more spokes. Dayne loves changing spokes! Getting covered in grease and dirt from the road would be any ones dream of course!
We were hooked up with a place to stay that night by cousin Lisa. Thank you Lisa!   Luke and Crystal provided us a well needed shower and cooked awesome home made pizza for us. It was so delicious  Dayne ate almost a whole one to himself. What else is new, right? After pizza, salad, home made cookies and blueberry muffins we were finally full. If you didn't know already, we eat a lot and love it! Haha. Thank you Crystal and Luke for all! Sleeping on a bed was what we needed although we are getting quite accustomed to sleeping on the ground without even our mats. I think this is due to the fact that 6 to 7 hours on a bike can make you so tired anything feels like a feather bed.

Sunday: After eating a healthy delicious bowl of cereal provided courtesy of our awesome hosts , we headed out. This would be  the last sunny day we would see for awhile . Riding through Pierre South Dakota, we saw what the devastation of flooding truly is. The town is situated along the Missouri river (a bad place  to be in a crazy year like this one). Houses have been evacuated and a huge dirt levy built by the national guard surrounds the town. The back tire needed to be "trued" and we needed more spokes so when  we reached the next town with a bike shop we looked for a  couch surfing host. For those not familiar with CS; you make an online account, sharing info. about yourself.  People who offer a "couch" in the town you are in can "accept"  and then you have a place to stay. It might sound sketchy but it is a super great way to meet cool people and avoid the high cost of hotels and such. Gratefully, Martin in Ft. Pierre accepted us, so we headed that way. Right off the bat we were introduced to his family, mom and dad and younger brother. All great people who welcomed us into their home with open arms. After feeding us some awesome roast beef they had just cooked, Martin and his brother Adam took us up to the spillway of the damn. This was totally insane. There are 6 pipes probably about20 ft in diameter, all of them shooting out water with such force it made the ground shake. Since there is so much water they have to let it out the emergency spillway at 160,000 square feet a minute. That's 1.5 times more than Niagara falls! We saw all the flooding and damage caused by it. All these peoples houses empty with sand bags surrounding them not knowing if they will be totally flooded or not.
That night it started to rain. It didn't stop for two whole days and there were tornado warnings too. We stayed with the Calkins for three days! They were so generous and treated us like family. They fed us these amazing meals, shared good conversation and took us around town, like this award winning ice cream place which was absolutely exquisite. We were welcomed to shower, clean our dirty cloths, and they helped us get needed bike parts. Although the weather totally sucked, we are grateful because it gave us the chance to meet some of the funnest, sweetest people one could ever meet. We're so grateful and will never forget this lesson of seeing just how big of hearts people can have. By far one of the biggest lessons learned on this journey.
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