Woke up and still had the whole Missouri to ourselves. I made it through the night curled easy in my hammock.

They promised us flatlands! South Dakota isn't flat. Spent the day endlessly pedaling up and riding down the hills of the Yankton reservation. We have a lot of miscellaneous food from when my mom was here so we didn't really eat whole lunches so much as snack.

This week ended up housing both Rachel and my hardest ride - you heard about mine but today was hers, because she didn't sleep much and because we didn't eat much the night before. Lesson learned. Man and some days your shorts rub and by the end of it I was feeling rawww.

The whole day we were excited about the Yankron ribfest. No better way to celebrate halfway than stuffing our stomachs full of Porky. We rolled into the KOA at 7:15 or whenever and showers and set up camp and we're halfway to passing out by the time we showed up at the park, we were so hungry. But the lights were all dark and the streets empty and the food smells week and it turns out they were setting up.. for tomorrow.

Um yeah so we ended up at the yesterday cafe - themed 50s diner - and I got a bud light before my meatloaf arrived and anyways never felt like that after a bud before.

Steve showed up and we went to Walmart which I have been to more times on this trip than ever in my life. And just for now I'm allowing myself to ignore their worker compensation problems and local-business displacement ethics and say that that place is kind of a wonderland for us. I got a child-sized (me-sized) collapsible spiderman fishing rod cause I've been trying to find someone to teach me how to clean a fish this whole trip but s'pose I need to catch one first.

Well houses are a blessing mostly but a little cursed because we had unpacked everything. So it took us three hours to make breakfast and sort it all and get it in the car and we left right as the rain hit.

Unlike most days, the rain was fantastic cause we had a tailwind! Which blew the water away from our faces and made the going easy... for the first ten minutes. Then the storm passed and we had headwinds the entire next 74 miles to the Missouri.

We stopped at a little cafe to have a last lunch with my mom. They had good coffee but had run out of pickles. It's been so good having her here. My mom's my rock and my springboard, keeping me grounded, encouraging me to fly. We said our final goodbyes outside a grocery store in Bonesteel. It took a little while.

The rest of the way, we just had South Dakota's tell-tale rolling hills. Coming up on the river was magnificent. The water appears to your left and we hit it just as the sun was setting below the bucolic hills and it's always nice to end a ride on a mile of downhill. We pulled into the south shore camping area just before Fort Randall dam and found out we had the entire place to ourselves.

Million dollar view from our hammocks, baby. We finished off our beers from the night before and ate our leftovers cold cause it was so warm out. Half a book later, I slept restlessly but cozy in the parachute fabric, prepping for an early start the next morning.

Listening to: Strangers

Day 50: Take us to the ribfest (Missouri to Yankton)

Day 49: Million Dollar View (Colome to the Missouri)