From Belle Fourche, we headed further north. We’re headed for Bowman, North Dakota which is our only destination in that state. But, we can’t make Bowman in one day — it’s 120 miles from Belle Fourche. So today we’re headed for Buffalo, South Dakota, a town of 380 people and the only town, other than Belle Fourche, that we passed through today.

On the way to Buffalo, we passed by the geographic center of the United States. We wanted to stop and see it, but from highway 85, the actual center was a sixteen mile round trip on a gravel road. Couldn’t they have put the center in a more convenient place? I could ride a few miles on a gravel road, but sixteen miles was a bit more than I wanted to do. Plus, I still had 60 more miles against a headwind to get to Buffalo. So, we took a few pictures and promised ourselves we’d come back someday. Well, “promise” might be too strong a word. I think we actually said something like “maybe next time”.

The rolling hills in this part of South Dakota are quite large, at least in terms of the distance from one summit to the next. From one summit, you might ride downhill very gradually for a couple miles, ride the bottom for a mile or so, and then climb back up for the next couple miles in order to get to the next summit. They’re not very big in terms of elevation change though. I think the largest was maybe 400 feet and the steepest was only 5% grade.

Here’s a link to all of the pictures from today:

September 2: Belle Fourche to Buffalo, South Dakota Photos

And, finally, the cycling statistics from today’s ride:

Total distance:	73.28 miles
Time:	5:58:25
Average speed:	12.3 mph
Maximum speed:	25.3 mph
Total calories:	4480
Average heart rate:	120 bpm
Maximum heart rate:	157 bpm
Total ascent:	2072 feet
Total descent:	2272 feet
Ride profile:	(click on image to view a larger version)
Ride comments: More headwinds today. Early in the day fairly calm. Later, it was 10-15 mph from the north. The last 20 miles or so, it was 5-10 mph from the northwest.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 at 7:19 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.