Day 33: One Month In!

Today marks one month of being on our Coast to Coast Adventure and of course we had to make it special by sleeping in a little! Previous groups who have done this trip told us that getting an early start is important but I’m going to counter that and say sleeping in is also important and much more enjoyable! 

We left Kindred, ND and were all super excited because today we were going to another state, Minnesota! We spent a little longer in North Dakota than we expected too (though spending the Fourth of July in Gackle was totally worth it) and we all geared up for our next awesome state sign photo shoot. Today’s route was a little different from what the Garmin was telling us to do because we are deciding to skip Fargo (I don’t think we are missing out terribly) as that would take us an extra 30 miles north and then right back south and we are trailblazers who absolutely don’t want to do extra mileage. Unfortunately because of the route we did take we never saw a state border sign welcoming us to Minnesota! Very rude. Don’t worry though, we made our own and honestly it’s probably better than any sign we could have hoped for. 

We saw a lot of cool stuff on todays ride like a bison farm, some horses playing in their stables, a personal helicopter that flew over us, and finally, thank goodness finally, TREES. For the first time in like 3 weeks there are more than 10 trees in a 10 mile radius and we are here for it. So many benefits - shade, blocking the wind, great scenery, I could go on. All that stuff was great but yesterday’s ride was definitely wearing on us as 40 miles in when we stopped for lunch we decided to cut our ride from an epic 95 miles to a much more reasonable 74. One thing we have talked about a lot the past few days is unpredictable weather and possibly the most frustrating part of that has been the wind. They are supposed to be blowing east, giving us a nice tailwind, but decided to be a little tricky this summer and we are in the middle of an entire week of headwinds. It’s about as fun as it sounds and slows us down a lot, but we make it to our destination eventually. 

Tonight we are in Dalton, MN in another town park (much better than RV parks because even though they don’t have showers, they are free) and decided to have a relaxing night of calling some family and friends and cheffing it up in our little portable kitchen. The Philly boys made Fettuccine Alfredo and Julia and I tried our best to rig up some hamburger helper with supplies from the local store. Honestly it turned out better than expected and it was a nice change from the usual bar food we’ve been eating. Julia and I also devoured some chips and salsa con queso (something Dustin has apparently never even heard of but he’s missing out) and it was probably the highlight of the day.

Photo Dump:

“Don’t look at me, this is confession”