We havent had a lot of cell phone reception or internet connection lately, but at the KOA we are staying at tonight there is internet.  So I will update you on the last couple of days.

Sunday we headed out from Minneapolis late in the afternoon and only made it about 180 miles to Jackson MN.  There was not much there, we just set up camp, and went to bed.

The next day we both were feeling pretty good, and so we decided to go pretty far, We went 375 miles from Jackson to Wall SD.  It was a long day, and it was made even longer because there was a big storm that we had to pass through.  Ryan made it through with just high winds, I however stopped at a rest stop and tried to wait it out.  It was dark black at 3 in the afternoon, and it rained hard at that rest stop for a good 30 minutes.  After a while it lightened up, and I hit the road.  However I didn’t realize that the wind was still real strong.  So when I crossed the Lake Francis Case - Mo River, I hit a strong northwind, and it almost pushed me out of my lane, and it probably would have had I not prepared myself.  I could see the wind blowing water over the bridge pretty fast, and so I knew I was in for a fight.

We made it to Wall witch must be the capital of tourist traps.  There were literally signs every 10 miles for what is called the “Wall Drug.”  Signs like $.05 coffee, Free Ice Water, and lame stuff like that, so of course I had to stop by.  It was a bunch of overpriced country stuff, but it was fun to see.

Then today we woke up, and headed to Mt Rushmore.  We were only about 75 miles away so we got there pretty quick.

It was $10 to park, so I opted to park outside the parking lot, or so I thought.  When I got back to my bike, which was in a spot right next to an RV, that appeared to be outside of the paying area just on the side of a street, there was a guy in a golf cart waiting for me.  He told me that I owed him $10, I told him I only had $7 on me which was true, so he held out his hand for the $7.  I gave it to him, then he told me that is how he pays all the people that work there.  As I started to ride away it occured to me that the only people who worked there were people who collected money for parking.  At $10 a vehicle, someone is making a whole lot of money, and I am sure it is not the hardworking parking attendant.  I wasn’t so upset at the guy demanding the money, as much as I was upset with the guilt trip he was trying to give me.  It occured to me, they could just have free parking, and then eliminate the need for all these extremely well paid parking attendants, oh well.

After the overpriced Mt. Rushmore, we headed to Deadwood, which once had its own HBO show.  The town is historic for lots of reasons, but that is where Wild Bill was shot while playing poker.  That happened at the Saloon #10, so I decided to play a little cards there as well.  Granted this was a rebuilt Saloon #10, but still pretty cool to play cards where Wild Bill once played.  I lost though, so it was a relatively expensive experience.

Tomorrow we start the journey to Yellowstone.  If we ride conservatively we will be there by Friday.  I hope there is internet between now and then.

Yesterday we had the privelege of sitting down with Pastor Marty, or Master Party as he sometimes likes to be called.  He is the pastor at The Edge Christian Fellowship.  We met up with Marty because the people we are staying with, Jane and Christy and work at a cofee shop that the church started in.  Jane is related to the Schmillens, some really good friends of ours from home.  They were a lot of fun to stay with, and so it kind of stinks that we have to move on.

The Edge is a very unique church, one of their slogans is we are just beggars showing other beggars where to find bread.  I love that concept and mentality, and that humility really does ring true there.  We also went to their Sunday service this morning, and Marty asked us to share a little bit about our trip with the church, so we did.  I think that is one of the first times we did that, but it was really cool.  In the podcast Marty shared some great stories of how God is moving in their church.  I really enjoyed our time with him.  You can also find them on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/user/pastormarty72

 

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We got to the twin cities yesterday afternoon, and stopped by Faith Alliance Church first thing.  There we sat down with pastor Andy Berreth.

Andy is also a biker, so we had a good time talking with Andy.  He is also good friends with Rob Zimmerman who I volunteered under at Long Beach Alliance Church several years back.

 

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We spent most of the day just relaxing and checking out Milwaukee yesterday, cause we knew we were going to get up early this morning.  We met with Pastor Mark Weigt from The Ridge Community Church at 6:30am today.  It was a good interview, and it was great to hear about the new movement of churches starting to work together in this area.  Mark was a really nice guy, and the reason we had to meet so early is because he had to go to a post adoption meeting right after we met since Mark and his wife have just adopted their third child.  So congratulations to them, and their family.

 

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Saturday night we went to see Kathy preach at Kentwoood Comunity Church.  She did a great job, but the message was on romance, so it was kind of awkward to listen to while sitting right next to Ryan.

The next morning we went to Marshill Bible Church and saw Shane Hipps preach.  It was really cool to see Shane speak, cause his church in Phoenix was actually the first church we interviewed on our trip, and that was over 3 months ago.  Afterwards we went up to talk to Shane, and he remembered us, so thats a good sign.  I also tried to go up and talk to Rob Bell afterwards, but as soon as he was done talking to the guy next to me, he rushed into a room with a locked door.  Had it not been locked I may very well have followed him, but I am sure he has to separate himself from the crowds quickly being as well known as he is, so I didnt take it personally.

Then Monday we met with Joe Hays from Ada Bible and Crisismode.org for lunch.  We ate at Yesterdogs, a local hotdog joint, and swapped stories from our trips.  After lunch we decided to head over to a local Brewery and meet up with some other local pastors, Greg and Brian.  Brian is actually from Long Beach, so it was cool to talk to him about home.  It was a very cool time having interesting conversations about church over a few beers.  We recorded it and so this podcast is going to be a lot different then most, but still has some very valuable info.

This is us with Joe and Brian, Greg had to head home a little earlier.

 

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After we crossed the border in Port Huron MI back into the US we were supposed to stop and camp for the night.  Well we got into the US pretty early, probably around 2pm.  So we decided that we might as well just keep going toward Aaron & Kathy Chambliss’ house in Grand Rapids, and save the $30 we would have to spend on a campsite.

The only problem was that we were not supposed to be at their house until the next day, so we needed to get a hold of them ahead of time to make sure it was OK if we came early.  Well we got to a campsite that was only 30 miles out from their house last night around 8pm.  We hadn’t heard back from them yet and so we decided to just go ahead and get a campsite.  Funny thing was that Kathy called us literally minutes after we got the site.

At first the campground looked pretty nice, there’s a big lake with stocked fish in it.  and lots of open space.  However there were a lot of mosquitos.  I tried walking over to the lake to cast out my line, and I couldn’t even cast out before I started getting literally swarmed in the face with mosquitos.  So we both set up our campsites and tried to go to bed pretty early.  This campsite however was pretty social, and so people were walking and talking by our tents til pretty late at night.  Which would not have been a problem except for one thing.  It violently started to storm around 6am, and when I say violently I mean hard rain, and thunder that came at the exact same time as the lightning over and over again.  I was honestly afraid, but I didn’t know if it was smarter to stay in my tent curled up in the fetus position under my sleeping bag, or get up and walk to the bathroom to seek shelter.  Eventually it calmed down enough for Ryan and I to both go to the bathrooms to wait out the rest of the storm.  Around 9am we were packed up and hit the road to Kathy & Aaron’s house, it was so nice to be a big nice dry house after another night camping in what became a small lake.

In the last 48 hours, we did 490 miles, which is a lot to us.

Total Miles: ~14,000

We went to Niagara Falls yesterday.  I got in there a few hours before Ryan cause he stopped to get his bike worked on.  I took a bunch of pictures, so here are some of them.

This shipwreck is called the Niagara Scow, and it is just above the falls.

This is the American Falls

This is the view from the Maid of the Mist, which is definitely worth doing if you ever get a chance.

In the afternoon there was a very visible rainbow coming form the falls, it was definitely one of the prettiest things I have ever seen.  My cruddy camera could not do it justice.

This is at Lake Ontario where we camped near Hamilton, Ontario.