Randy and I woke up this morning wondering how often the train passed Surrey last night. I thought 6 times, Randy thought 8. We soon found out it was the last few trains leaving Minot for the east. Highway 2 and Amtrak were both shut down due to flooding. As we rode this morning the road was about the same, but it was eerie to ride on a divided 4 lane highway with hardly any traffic. We had talked to a North Dakota State Trooper as we were leaving, he said it looked like we could still travel east but there was water on the road about 30 miles east. When we got there it was amazing to see the flooding Mouse River so defined all the way around the highway and even flowing over it. We had to ride our bikes through the flowing water. This evening we are staying in Rugby which is the geographical center of North America. Once again, the people are very friendly. We were directed to the library, from there we were directed to a drug store and a grocery store. At the drug store a man came up to us and asked if we were tourers. He then told us a comprehensive bikers list of information about Rugby; library location and hours, where to camp and that it was shady and had showers, the best food in town, who had the cheapest pop. We took his advice about the camping. It’s at a combination City Park and Fairgrounds. Preparations are going on here tonight for the Fair next week so we had several people to talk to. Because of flooding, the consensus seems to be we should stay on highway 2 for a while longer.
Greg