Day 22: 91 Miles

Thursday July 7th

91 miles, from Fargo, ND to Battle Lake, MN. Instantly I noticed the geographical differences between the two states. North Dakota had more hills than Montana, but was still relatively flat in comparison to what the group is use to. Minnesota is very similar to New England, not only because of the increase of hills, but also because we have re-entered a geographical area that contains trees. Rest stops have become more enjoyable because we are able to get out of the scorching sun. Now down to what actually happened today. The beginning of the day consisted of a pace line Fargo, being one of the largest cities in North Dakota, was extremely busy when we left our hotel at 8 AM. We entered Minnesota and did our traditional initials of the state, from there we kept a nice pace until mile 35 where we took our first break, in the shade of course. While taking our break a father and a son were passing by and we invited them to have a snack with us. The two cyclists ended up joining us for the rest of the day. The son, named Devon, was the same age as most of the kids in our group and we all hit it off well. So, seeing as we were going to the same town as our newfound friends we invited them to join us on the rest of our journey. Devon and the group talked about recently released AP exam scores and college, which is conversation most of us had been avoiding for the majority of the trip. When we reached Battle Lake, Minnesota; we stopped at the lake and dove in chamois and all. After a 91-mile day with the temperature being in the high 90’s a swim was ideal. That night we stayed at a beautiful Baptist church with a very small congregation, like all the other churches, the people we so kind to us. They cooked us BBQ beef sandwiches, and lasagna. The food was amazing; for dessert we had DQ dilly bars and homemade cookies. Battle Lake was a beautiful town, personally I wouldn’t have minded taking our rest day there. There was an ice cream place that we obviously hit up; it had 40 different flavors ice creams! Half way there!

-Aaron Weiss