Date:
07.06.2018
Altitude:
1594.5 ft (486 m)
Distance:
63.33 mi (101.92 km)
Total
Altitude: 69514.4 ft (21188 m)
Total
Distance: 2689.17 mi (4327.81 km)
After
I moved away from the Northern Tier route the last couple days in
order to go to Montevideo, I started going back in the direction of
the Northern Tier route today. It will take me two more days to reach
Fargo,ND and the Northern Tier route. All in all the detour will add
five days to my trip. But I'm still have enough time to reach Seattle
and the detour was worth it for me. It was nice to see the place
again, where I spend almost a year of my life.
My
day started quite slow. Since I didn't get any breakfast at the
hotel, I went to the restaurant across the street for breakfast.
Breakfast was great, but even for me it was just way to much the
portion was huge. I sure didn't need any lunch today, after the
amount of food I had for breakfast. After I was finished with
breakfast, I still didn't get started with the route for the day just
yet. Before I left for Ortonville, I stopped at the brewery in
Montevideo and talked for with a guy I went to high school with. My
departure got even delayed a bit more when the local newspaper wanted
to do a short interview with me. So there is going to be an article
about me in the local paper. I will include it or a link to it here,
if I can find it. I got finally started at about 9:30 this morning
but since I only had to cover about 60 miles that wasn't an issue.
Today
was the day of the gravel roads. The majority of today's route stayed
on gravel roads, that made the ride a bit more challenging. Most of
the gravel roads were good to ride on, the gravel was compacted and
that made it a bit easier, especially with the wide tires on my bike.
Still it slowed me down, I would have been faster on paved roads.
Some of the gravel roads were not really compacted and that made it
harder even with the wide tires. On these roads I really needed to
find a good line were the gravel wasn't as deep and needed to be
constantly alert. My tires kept skidding to the left or right. Riding
on these roads wasn't any fun. Still I enjoyed most of today's route,
even though the weather wasn't the best. There were dark clouds in
the sky the whole day and at the end of the day there was even
little drizzle. At least the wind was in my favor today. The scenery
today changed a bit, there weren't as many forest areas along the
route as during the last few days. On the gravel roads and also on
the paved roads I went mainly through farmland today. Still there was
the occasional lake or river beside the road, so it was not just
farmland. I arrived early in Ortonville, which was good, since I got
the last available room in the hotel in Ortonville. I would have
added quite a bit to today's route, if I would have been forced to
keep going and camping wasn't really an option for me.
Conclusion
for the day:
Riding
conditions on gravel roads can vary quite a bit, from great to
terrible.
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