Chamberlain, SD to Murdo, SD

Our ride today was almost as good as it gets, it was a bit rainy in the morning, but the weather the rest of the day was cool and perfect for exercising in.  Since today was the Fourth of July, Cady got the Mosher this morning and treated us to the climax speech from the movie Independence Day, which was awesome, and really pumped us up for today's ride.  We rode over the Missouri River today, so we are officially in the West now, it was really pretty, but we couldn't get any pictures because it was raining this morning when we went over it. 

    The terrain today was more rolling hills, and excess cows, as has been the case for the past week or so now.  It is occasionally beautiful, but we are more often bored out there seeing the same endless grass and cows over and over, so much so that our most exciting moments of the day today came when we managed to scare some cows into running alongside of us, and we got way too excited to see cows that were not just standing there staring at us as we rode past.  The way all the cows stare as we roll by makes me wonder if maybe we are the most exciting thing they have seen in a long time as well.  Anyways, yeah, if you're wondering how we entertain ourselves out there, singing and telling jokes can only go on so long, and yes, yelling at cows is the next most entertaining thing to do.

    We met some awesome people today, including the Holder family, who we met on their way back home to Sturgis.  They were some of the nicest people we have met so far on our trip and even gave us Native American nicknames, Conor was Two Lashes, and Clinton was Pretty Eyes, haha.  They also wanted to get pictures of us, which we were more than happy to oblige with, and the kids were all really cute, we are hoping they will send in the pictures so that we can post them up on the site. 

We got in early again, and picked up some fireworks for the night at some local stands.  Murdo is very small, its hard for me to imagine anyone living here, since the population of the town, 679, is almost the same as the size of my high school graduating class.  The Murdo high school graduated only 17 kids this year, it's strange for me to imagine what that's like.  Zernyu and Cady cooked up some good spaghetti for dinner, and then we went out to test some of our fireworks out.  Cady accidently set a small part of a field on fire, but with the help of the fire department, the fire was kept extremely limited and nothing bad happened, other than Clinton cutting his leg trying to hop a barbed wire fence trying to put the fire out.  We were happy to show Sae-bin what the Fourth of July was about(he's Canadian and Korean and this is his first Fourth of July in America), and right in the middle of the excitement, he ran up to me and said, "This is the best Fourth of July ever!!"  Needless to say, we are headin out to see some professionally run fireworks just outside town in a bit.  All in all, it has been a great holiday, and tomorrow we get to see the Badlands, which everyone keeps telling us is beautiful, so I am super excited about that, even though the ride will be a long one, clocking in at 99.7 miles, on the way to Wall, SD, which is also the home of the world famous WallDrug, which we plan on spending lots of time in!!

Animals seen: Pheasants, turtles, endless staring cows

States traveled through:14(NY,NJ,PA, DE, MD, DC, VA, WV, OH, IN, IL, WI, MN, SD)
Distance today: 70 mi
Total Distance traveled:  2249 mi