Day 15, Snake Creek to Ft. Thompson camping

Friday June 12, 2020, 77 miles (124 km) - Total so far: 898 miles (1,445 km)

I'm super tired. This is my 15th day in a row of cycling, through EVERYTHING. Today was also beautiful.

I woke up and was gone by 6:20. By 12 noon I'd done 50 miles with the help of a faint south wind. I stopped in Chamberlain which has an excellent Main Street. The storefronts are "Western." I got a bite at a cafe and then hit the drug store for some ointment for my backside. No wonder I've been so sore in the saddle. I also got more snacks and tuna from Family Dollar.

Then I stopped at the Atka Lakota Museum. The center told 2 stories: 1 about the St. Joseph Indian boarding school and the other story was about Lakota culture. The boarding school is a very complex issue I'm finding. There was good and bad done, and good intentions gone wrong. I had a Thomas Pynchon moment(I believe he's the author I'm thinking of) when looking at a display of 19th century Indian objects, were actually the props donated from the movie "Dances with Wolves."

I wanted to hang out and wait for the sun to go down a bit before tackling the last 20 miles, which with the wind helping should only take an hour. Hahaha. Leaving the center was uphill as we were also leaving the river. I was on this path that took me up to a glorious overlook with historical significance. Lewis shot a "wild goat", what is an antelope at that spot. The next 15 miles were brutal and beautiful. The landscape was these dramatic rolling hills, verdant green, wild, unblemished. I was climbing in my lowest gear sometimes for a mile. One after another, hurtling descent where I took the whole lane, and then up. At one point going down (it was just me, no cars, nothing) I did a Comanche yell.

By 4 I was in Ft. Thompson, but I have no signal, no data; it's hard to figure out where camping was. A security person at the reservation grocery tried to help me. He told me exactly where to go, but did I listen, no. What he said made no sense since there wasn't a sign at the road and you had to go down behind the dam and all the power lines. I rode back and forth over the dam twice and was scouting out stealth camping. But I needed some water to after that. A couple guys in safety vests with the U.S. Army Corps of engineers were doing something and I stopped to ask if they had extra water. Paid for by taxpayers a guy said, help yourself. We got talking about my trip and he was from Chicago. He moved away just as Wicker Park was gentrifying. Anyway, he showed me satellite imagery of the campground I was looking for.

So I'm beat and need to see how to contact my Warmshowers host from where I'm at.

this series is from an installation put together by alumni of St. Joseph's Indian School in Chamberlain where the museum in located. Former students are working through a heritage of pain

leaving Chamberlain I encountered a hill with a superb view of the river. A sign said Lewis noted in his journals shot a "wild goat"

Chamberlain - Sept. 16, 1804 - Near present day Chamberlain, the expedition stops at a place they call Camp Pleasant. In Lewis' journals he describes the numerous buffalo, deer, antelope and elk.