West by Northwest Day 2

Woke up early and had coffee and waffles at the hotel.  The complimentary breakfast waffles were surprisingly good - especially saturated in syrup.
We got on the road shortly after sunup.  Immediately after leaving, we got turned around a bit, but managed our way back on track, heading north on US218.  As is usually the case, we nearly had the road to ourselves by leaving early, especially since it was a Saturday.
We rode north as we watched the sun rise to the east and clouds build to the west.  I had looked at the radar before leaving and rain was likely once we headed west.  We stopped for gas and put on our rain gear before heading west (ie we didn't say that it didn't look too bad and end up drenched for hours).  The temperature had dropped to the point that the rain gear was not uncomfortable.  After an hour or so, it started to rain.  It rained steadily for a couple hours - never very hard, but a constant rain.
Once near the South Dakota border, most of the rain had passed and we headed north.  Traffic remained light.  In fact traffic was light to nonexistent for the entire day.  We headed north on I-29 to get to northern South Dakota.  We stopped for gas and a little while later, we stopped at a cafe for lunch.  We almost ended up at fast food, but the bacon cheese burgers at The Grainery Cafe were excellent and the extra time was a nice break.  We hit very minor amounts of rain further on, but ignored it as we had shed our rain gear at lunch.

Heading across South Dakota was nice.  The weather improved dramatically after lunch.  Scenery changed from flat farm land, to rolling hills to some fairly moderate hills.  Not the mountains or anything like that, but I really do like traveling in the upper plain states.  Traffic is almost always light and the subtle changes in scenery are nice.  Just avoid the interstates.

We passed fields of huge wind turbines.  They must have been harvesting them as trucks were headed south with blades secured as loads.  My guess is the wind turbine crop was making up for some of the poor crops due to the drought.  What was interesting is that as we got near central South Dakota, some areas actually looked flooded.

In addition to the wind turbines, we passed several fields of sunflowers.  They were likely just past their prime where they would have looked like a million happy faces.  As it is not a crop we see often near home, it was neat to see.

At one point, when the terrain was very flat, I opened up the bike for a few minutes.  Perhaps sophomoric, but fun to do once in a while and frankly not very dangerous in the middle of South Dakota.

The plan was originally to stop near Aberdeen, but it was too early and the weather was nice so we continued on until Mobridge.  There was a casino hotel nearby but it was booked up due to some special event involving horses, kids and firemen.  Go figure.
Mobridge sits on the Oahe Lake which is formed by the damming of the Missouri River.  The lake is approximately 230 miles long.  I was surprised to look at a map and see that this actually was the Missouri River.
We got a decent hotel overlooking the lake.  Dinner was adequate (ribs and steak) followed by (drum roll) more Oreo Cakesters.
Total mileage of the day was 638.9 miles.