There's an old caboose at Glen Ullin Memorial Park and Campground, which adds something to this rather hot and noisy campground - it is next to a railway line and trains occasionally pass at night. In my fuddled sleepy state I half awoke and imagined a train was about to run us over having come off the tracks, it seemed right by the tent... We set off reasonably early - about 9.30am and, with a following wind we made good time - the road was closed when it reached the interstate but we simply joined the interstate briefly and used the detour back off the other side. Traffic was very light. We sped along - at Richardton there is a very impressive Benedictine monastery - made me think of Thomas Merton the radical monk of the late 20th century - though he was a Cistercian variant - Trappist. I cycled around the sprawling grounds but it was like the Marie Celeste. I would guess that vocations to the Benedictines are thin on the ground. We pushed on without the benefit of monastic chocs or postcards or even spiritual reading (though Vanity Fair is spiritual reading of course - full of rakes' progresses, male and female).
We found a pleasant shelter - for the temperatures were now in the 30s centigrade - in a small park at Taylor and drank lots of water from a tap there. The landscape is gently hilly but boiling hot with very little shade, the road is usually visible for a couple of miles or more ahead. The breeze caused by cycling is very welcome but if you stop it's like being under a grill... We were lucky to have a touch of a tailwind, fading as the day progressed, and we were doing well when we crossed the line into a new time zone - Mountain Time. This is our third time zone. They are useful because we gain an hour every time, so we got even earlier and arrived in the sprawl of interstates and walmarts that is Dickinson at about 2pm! We debated carrying on further but the tailwind had gone and the temperatures were in the mid 30s centigrade. Best to stop at 50 miles - a touch cooler is forecast for tomorrow. We did meet two Germans doing a transam, heading for New York - Chris and Cornelius from Frankfurt. They have to finish in New York by the end of this month so they wanted to reach Bismarck today and had already booked a motel. I hope they managed it. Chris had a scabbed over wound on his leg - a dog had chased, knocked him off his bike and in the resulting crash he got badly scraped on the leg. The dog wandered away when the chase was finished. It was evidently healing well now. They were blogging but on Instagram and WhatsApp - these are very innovative apps and Web sites but sadly dear reader they are not open access (though monetarily free) so you may well not be able to see their progress. Huzzah for a good old Web site, the ideals of the Web, open access, free software and Linux! Phew I feel better now that's off my chest. One of my sisters has told me what the beautiful flower was from the entry for the 30th July - it is a Liatris Punctata - see Wikipedia page. The North Park Campground, where I'm typing this in a small tent in hot and humid conditions though now cooling a little, is great. It has a microwave in its laundry - so we've eaten microwaved noodles with veg and tofu followed by spring rolls, with a glass of wine too - courtesy of the Walmart around the corner. Transams have these blissful moments.... We are just here.