South Dakota Heat

Pierre, SD -- So far, South Dakota has been dry and hot. On Saturday, Jim drove me up here and on Sunday I decided to spend the day in a motel as temperatures hit a hundred and twelve. Yesterday, when the forecast predicted a comparatively low peak of a hundred, I thought it might be a good day to make the eighty-mile ride to Pierre.

I left at five in the morning to get as many miles in as possible while it was cool out, but even before the sun rose it was in the high seventies. The early morning ride was pretty, though. I would do it again just to be out with the sunrise. I rode through the Crown Creek Indian Reservation and stopped at a place on my map called Mac's Corner.

I expected a town, but in fact it was just a gas station called "Mac's Corner." The cashier said she didn't know how it had gotten on the map, but that it had always been there. After that, there was nothing until Pierre. I know there are a lot of Northeasterners reading this and there was a time when I would barely have believed that, either. I rode for at least a day before I could really say that I had gotten out of the Boston suburbs -- how could there actually be nothing for almost 50 miles outside of a state capitol? It still doesn't quite make sense to me, but I can tell you that there's nothing between Mac's Corner and Pierre.



Well, there were at least a few houses in the first twenty miles, a few dirt roads promising other towns in 15 to 20 miles, and cars passed every five minutes or so. Normally a car-free road would sound good to me, but I was glad for what traffic there was. Not only was it hot, but there was no shade at all. While the sun was still rising in the sky, bales of hay by the side of the road made a shadow of a few square feet, but there were only very occasional trees, and they were behind barbed-wire fences providing shade to a few huddled cows.

Central South Dakota is having a terrible draught, I learned. They're far below the rainfall they should have at this time of year, and you can tell it by looking around. Farmers are having to truck their cattle to pastures that actually have grass or if they can't do that, just to sell the cows because there's nothing to feed them. The corn crop is shot -- there's no amount of rain that could save it now. Aside from two or three fields I saw watering their crops, the corn was dried out and light brown, just like the rest of the landscape. The most dramatic indicator of the drought that I saw was a farmer who had taken to his corn field with a hay baler and just started to bale the corn stalks, ears and all. It was so dried out that it was worth no more than hay.



I didn't take a picture of that, though, because I saw it from the window of a pick-up truck. About 11:30 I felt like all the water I was drinking wasn't doing enough to combat the heat, so I stuck out a thumb and got picked up by the rural route mailman. I helped him deliver mail for a couple hours, tried to drink a lot of water and eat something, but I was a bit too woozy to fully enjoy the experience. When I got to Pierre and the folks' house that I was staying at, I started vomiting and ended up in the ER being rehydrated. Oops. I was carrying tons of water and thought I was drinking plenty (more than a liter an hour), but I think I just underestimated the combination of the heat and having nowhere to rest in the shade. Hello, South Dakota. I've learned my lesson, though. I'll be planning a short day or a rest day next time it looks like it's going to be that hot.

Just a little while after the postman picked me up, a cooler front moved in that should keep things in the 80's and 90's for the rest of the week. I'm resting today (doctor's orders) but this would actually have been a perfect day to ride -- it's about seventy-five and overcast. Tomorrow, though. Onwards and westward.