Day 3 in the rain!

SO day two was interesting. We made it to Hill City, then hitched a ride to Floodwood, where we had a campsite waiting.  Thank you Wayne and Mitch for giving two crazy cyclists a ride ... adding 60 miles to your day.
About 10 miles from Floodwood it began to sprinkle...
We got there in time, threw up the tent, locked the bikes to a tree, rolled the Burley inside and then it began to downpour!  It was crazy.  We were dry and comfy.

 It rained from 4:30 Tuesday till about 12:30 PM on Wednesday and Floodwood gained about 2 inches of rain.  At first the wind predictions were insane... 15 MPH with up to 45 MPH gusts!  This only happened in the night though so we waited for a chance to go the next day.

In our rush to get our campsite up, we were a little farther than our 25 foot extension cord so we had to make a cover up so the plug in wouldn't get wet!

We made some coffee, washed clothes and with our electricity, kept checking the weather to see if we could get out of Floodwood between bands of rain.

Then it happened, I looked out of our tent around 12:30 and saw two squirrels frolicking underneath the "neighbors" camper. After watching them for a moment, I thought, "my, what big tails they have... oh my what big bodies they have"... and then they came out of the shadows... black and white skunks!!!  We threw our stuff together and HIT THE ROAD!  You can barely see the two stinkers in the picture below.

The ride to Duluth was very difficult.  It was part of the ride where we had to literally think of these miles as sponsored and that this is going to a greater cause.  Riding bike in the rain is one thing, riding bike in the rain when it is 50 degrees is another.  Riding bike in the rain while it is 50 degrees and trucks are going by spraying you with water and you can't see more than a mile is awful. For me (Matthew) it was the low point of the trip.  I don't like being wet, I don't like being cold and both of these things were happening at a very intense level.      

Whenever I get in these situation I think ahead.  For every trial, there is always a something better to come!