Day 58: To the Corn Palace!

I woke up a little more promptly than I usually do since there is now somebody else worked into my schedule. It was easy with Steph since we both got up at the same time, when we felt like it. But now there's Thomas getting up on his schedule and me on mine so it's a little trickier. He lost his credit cards a few days ago so this morning he had money wired to him from back home and picked it up at the gas station. I was a little relieved to see his stuff not all packed up when I got moving, meaning I could go about at my usual morning pace.

We started off riding across the Missouri which is already a great river, I can't imagine what the Mississippi will look like. A little bit of navigation and we made it to Hwy 16 which eventually would lead us all the way into Mitchell. Although Thomas has more cycling experience such as racing, he's also carrying more weight on his trailer and I've been riding longer so we seem to be a good match in terms of pace. It's also nice to ride with a partner since normally I get a little bored and my pace slows throughout the day but with Steph and now Thomas I've been able to keep a constant pace simply because I'm more entertained.

Through our six hours on the road we discussed quite a bit, from professions to politics to tales of the road. He's a mathematician and very bright so the conversation was good. Also, it turns out he met Fred from a few posts ago! I started by saying I ran into kind of a crazy looking old guy and Thomas said, "You mean Fred?!" We laughed about the Fred stories and both being showed his pinned knee. We figure Fred is now about a day or two ahead of us. We stopped a couple times for snacks and water but overall rode pretty consistently into Mitchell.

Mitchell's claim to fame is being host to the World's Only Corn Palace so we had to check it out. We were able to split the cost of a campsite and setup both tents for no additional cost so the grand total for the nights lodging is $8.10 for me. We set up our respective camps and rode over to the Corn Palace. It was pretty interesting, basically a large building made out of standard materials that they decorated and cover with murals made out of different colored corn. Each year 275,000 ears of corn are cut in half and nailed to the walls to create a new set of murals. I of course had to have some corn on the cob and then we headed to Walmart to resupply and create a joint dinner.

I've recently (in the past two days) realized that I can do some food shopping in the evening and enjoy some fresh fruit in the morning. Most fruit doesn't travel well so I've stuck with trail mix, but having fresh blueberries and a banana with my oatmeal this morning was fantastic so I got some bananas, kiwis, and peaches for tomorrow. Thomas and I also collaborated on a pasta dinner with canned sauce and grilled turkey hot dogs and bell pepper. He wanted ice cream so we ended up getting a quart of Cookies n' Cream since it was actually cheaper than two smaller portions. I realized when shopping that Thomas has been spending much less on food than myself. In some respects I envy it and will probably try to scrap together some meals more often, but in others I will buy a few more quality ingredients than those we used tonight.

While the water was boiling we opened the ice cream since it's in the mid 80s and it obviously wouldn't last too long. Imagine two hungry young men who just rode 75 miles with a quart of ice cream, we had finished half of it before the pasta entered the water. Dinner was quite tasty and it was nice to do a little bit of cooking for a change. I headed into town for a beer and A/C while I did some blogging, leaving Thomas back at camp since I seem to have run into the only German that doesn't drink a drop.

We're on a similar path for now so I expect we'll ride into Sioux Falls tomorrow and from there who knows. Thomas has also been blogging at http://mactsblog.blogspot.com/ but it's mostly in German. In case any of you readers know German it would be great if you could read his blog and make sure he's not making fun of me. Tomorrow Sioux Falls will have a brewery or two so I'll get my first craft beers in more than a week, oh life can be so hard!