Hi everyone! Welcome to day 30. Today was another long 90 mile day spent entirely on a busy country highway. It was not a particularly fun riding day for almost all of us, with the heat as well as the constantly passing us cars and trucks. Overall, I would describe today as a day we all just needed to get through and move on to the next one.

Big highlight of the day number one: crossing the state border into South Dakota! Unfortunately for us, the scenery did not immediately change into a wild wild west-style mountainous terrain but pretty much remained the same - cornfields as far as the eye can see. We still have a few more corn days, meanwhile waiting for the long awaited change of scenery.

One of the groups also decided to detour specifically to take a picture with the magnificent Minnesota-Iowa-South Dakota tristate Marker. I am sure the extra miles were totally worth it ;)

Highlight of the day number two: the last group of riders which included myself, Cal, Sam, Peter, and Maddie, ended up making a small detour of our own. Right on the border between Iowa and South Dakota Sam took a small tumble off her bike, getting a scratch on her leg. The next thing we knew, a man approached us right there, on the side of the highway, riding an electric scooter and asking us whether we needed help or first aid items. We agreed to his offer and ended up spending upwards of two hours at this man’s and his family’s house. They were incredibly nice and generous with us, letting us spend time with them at their house while we waited for the van and even giving us snacks! These nice people turned out to be cyclists as well, and we even got a demonstration of the family’s dad’s unicycling skills. And of course the biggest prize of all - we got to pet their two corgis.

After we finally got to our Sioux Falls stayover at a YMCA, we had a dinner of donated pizza (thanks to Veronica’s food donation calling skills), took showers, and went to sleep promptly after.

-Valerie