Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP), ND

It’s official: I am allergic to cats. We’re here in Culbertson and with each new Sunday, the chore groups change; I’m now on laundry crew. There’s a whole lot of laundry to go through since the majority of our gear and bags are drenched from camping last night (more detail later). The laundromat here was already closed when we arrived and there is no laundromat in our next town. The church members were generous enough to open up their homes for us to do our laundry; six different homes/families helped out. Well, I’m doing one bag of laundry and Charley and Chole have four cats. Way back when, I could make it through a sleepover and only have mild wheezing, coughing and itchy eyes by the morning. I’ve been here all of 20 minutes and my nose has started running and breathing is a bit more difficult. I’ve sequestered myself in their spare bedroom as the cats aren’t allowed in here that often. A bit antisocial and rude not to talk to the hosts, I know, but I’ve got to keep riding and clear breathing passageways are an important part of making that happen.

Cat allergies are just the final topper to the past 24 hours. It’s been taxing. Why? Let me tell you.

Our ride from New Town brought us to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP). The scenery was gorgeous and a perfect day for a ride. Most of us rode by ourselves just so we could take a look around; it was that type of day. It was a combination of rolling hills, rocky mountains in the distance, farms and fields. Absolutely beautiful. During the ride, I realized that I had finally begun to look around while riding. And it’s not that I didn’t the previous 2600 miles, but the openness of the horizon forces you to look up and take in everything. The van was getting looked at again since it was having troubles but fixed by the end of the day. There’s a whole fanangled way to start the van now: release emergency break; turn ignition key halfway, shift into neutral, turn ignition key all the way; shift into drive; and you’re ready to start. It’s the same way to turn off the engine just backwards. Bike and Build really needs to start allocating funds to having proper equipment.

The van manages to make it to Watford, just 15 miles from TRNP and we have a lunch break at a park in a camping/RV spot. Nothing notable but we were so close to the park and looking forward to our first night of camping in the outdoors, mainly because the clouds were clear and there didn’t seem to be any chance for rain.

The last 15 miles to TRNP had us turn left and catch an amazing tailwind. I literally breezed through it. There were also some large rolling hills which were not a problem at all. No, actually, they were fun. At some point, I was going 25 mph on the uphill, completely unheard of without a good tailwind. After climbing a hill and with a mile to go there was an epic downhill. Some people managed to get to 50mph on it. I didn’t push the speed and instead pulled over halfway down for a scenic overlook. The view and landscape had just suddenly appeared in front of us at the top of the hill: Theodore Roosevelt National Park. TRNP is the North Dakotan part of the Badlands and the rock formations and landscape are breathtaking. Completely unexpected for the day and a great way to end it. Camping would be fun.

Now, we all had to wait at the entrance of the park so we could ride in together. Also, we needed to pay since camping would cost us about $110 as a group, rather expensive for us. TRNP also took us 20 miles out of the way and off the route, since the next day’s ride we’d just be backtracking to Watford and leaving from there. A 40-mile detour is just dumb, but I guess all previous NUS trips have gone here since it’s so pretty.

We decided to take a vote between camping at TRNP or the lunch stop which would bring us right to our starting point tomorrow and much cheaper. Gathering 30 people and their opinions together is frustrating. My main beef with the voting is that we voted twice. The first time the votes had us staying in Watford, but once that was set; there was discussion and murmuring going on about all the pros to staying at TRNP to sway the people who abstained. We voted a second time (and with the four missing people) and the votes put us in TRNP for the night. It was all a lot of hot air and noise between people. I frankly didn’t care where we camped, but was a little annoyed at the idea of re-voting. If you lose the first time, sorry, that’s how voting works, deal with it. And, abstaining from a vote does not mean that you can see how the vote turns out and then chime in your opinion for the second vote; it means you have no opinion, that’s why you abstained and should not be counted for the second time either.

Whatever pent up anger I had was immediately gone once we started our 5-mile ride through the park to our campsite, Juniper. We were riding through amazing scenery; every single picture turned out great, there was no way around it. Also, the park has hundreds of bison roaming around freely. We’d be riding and have bison or long horn cattle not too far away off the road. Or even better, the bison would decide to hang out on the road and you’d have to wait until they decided to leave. Mostly people are driving in cars through the park safely surrounded by a steel cage; we were openly exposed on our bicycles. Bicycles seem like a really stupid idea sometimes. And on a funny note, the entire 5-mile ride to the campsite, I felt like I was in Jurassic Park and hummed the theme in my head. While not velociraptors by any means, Bison can still run up to 36mph, which means I’d get mauled down.

The campsite was a campsite: picnic tables; small building with men’s and women’s bathroom; paved parking spots; outdoor faucet and nature. It was a whole lot of nature. Frankly, I get enough nature during my ride and I have no desire to be in or see more of it when I’m finished with the ride.

The first thing we have to do is set up our tents. Now, there’s thirty of us so we have a lot of tents, too bad not all of them have all their parts. We have 7 tents, only 5 of them have all their parts. We didn’t have enough stakes, so we resorted to using spoons and screwdrivers. A sixth tent was put up through a hodgepodge of leftover or broken poles and string to tie corners to a tree. Again, Bike and Build needs to invest in outfitting groups with proper equipment. We did have two tarps to make a shelter. The skies were clear and didn’t seem like rain, so none of it all seemed to matter.

Dinner crew week for me so we had the fortunate task of cooking dinner. We grilled up hot dogs, heated up baked beans, warmed up cans of corn and green beans, and put out leftover rice and salad. Erik, from his camping adventures, organized dessert: baked bananas. You take a banana, cut it in half, stuff it full of marshmallows and chocolate chips, wrap it in tin foil, then leave it on low coal to cook, melt and ooze together. It looked like barf to me, so I just ate them all individually.

For cooking, we did make a trip back to Watford to go to a grocery store to get ice for the coolers and charcoal for the grill. I jumped at the opportunity to get out of nature for even just a bit and went with the van. Now, the water in ND is gross. It smells like rotten eggs and leaves an oily finish on the tongue. I broke down and bought a gallon of distilled water. Best $1.19 I’ve ever spent.

During their rounds for the evening, a park ranger dropped by and while chatting, mentioned that it was expected to rain around 3 in the morning. Thanks for the tip and we all headed to put up our rainflys.

Now, I opted to sleep in the tent furthest away from everything. I didn’t want to be near the bathroom since I figured the smell and noise would spead. And as it got darker, the row of windows up top leaked all the bathroom light out and I wanted it to be as dark as possible. Also, most tents were set up closer to the picnic tables and around trees, it just all seemed a bit crowded and that’s how I came to the tent furthest away.

Christopher and I were tent buddies. He needs to watch something in order to go to sleep, so he borrowed Dan’s computer and drifted off to the glow of the laptop. And I went to sleep, now the fun begins.

2:15: I wake up to hear light rain falling on the tent. Take a look around to make sure everything’s sealed and dry, then go back to a restless sleep, still aware of the rain.

2:45: Wake up again to a hard rain hitting the tent. The tent is still doing its job, no water in the tent yet but a bit anxious about the rain. It’s coming down. Just in case, I reach outside the tent to grab my flip flops to have them at the ready. Also, I grab my glasses and rest with them on, so I won’t have to worry about vision should things get worse. Always be prepared.

3:00: Good thing I was prepared. Not only is it raining hard still, but the wind decided to show up and we have ourselves a full out storm. Our tent is blowing every which way but still firmly anchored. The bottom of my sleeping bag is now wet, but the rest still dry and it helps that I’m on a thermarest. Christopher is fully awake now and we’re in a bit of a panic.

3:15: Christopher’s half of the tent collapses. He’s now over on my side and we’re just watching as the wind does as it pleases to our tent. The rain is still going. We’re beginning to question whether we should stay in the tent or seek refuge in the bathroom, our only sheltered, enclosed place.

3:17: Dan comes to our tent flap door and asks if we’re okay. He also wants to know if his computer is okay (Christopher did put it back in the computer case and wrapped it with his sleeping bag). Dan tells us that everyone is in the bathroom and we should join. We get our gear and head out into the storm.

Immediately I get soaked to the skin from the storm. The wind and rain make it hard to see. But, the shining light from the bathroom windows serves as a perfect beacon to guide me in the right direction and get my bearings. When the lightning flashes, I get glimpses of the wreckage; all the other tents are completely flattened, not a single one is left standing.

I run over to the women’s bathroom, but as I get closer, see that the door is open with huddled masses of people barely fitting in. They see me coming and tell me to go to the men’s bathroom; they’re full in there and can’t take anymore people.

The men’s bathroom is nearly empty. Christopher, Dan and I are in it and a few other people trickle in. By now, there are sleeping bags and clothing hanging over the stalls to dry. It quickly became clear that if we were going to sleep at all, we were going to sleep in the bathroom. Our tents were unsaveable and the van already had people in it. We laid out a tarp over the floor, spread out the few thermarests we had and arranged our bodies to fit on the floor so we could all lie down. It was a tight fit, but we managed to get it to work. It made for some rather awkward positions/locations, but we were all so tired and we really had no other choice.

Did I mention that of the two stalls in the bathroom, one was clogged and smelled?

Sean slept next to a urinal. Kathy’s lower half slept in the clogged stall and her head facing my butt. Ian’s head and my head were quite the close neighbors. Christopher, Erik, Kim were in the fetal position. And Jessie somehow managed to get to spread out across a thermarest all to herself.

Note: Erik slept in a hammock before the bathroom and he toughed it out in the storm as long as he could. It all ended when his rainfly blew off leaving him exposed to the elements. But before that, he was just swinging with the wind.

We managed to get somewhere between 3 and 4 hours of sleep, if you can call it that. I kept waking up slapping various parts of myself since there were mosquitos everywhere. The worst was on my neck. The next day I basically had 4 massive welts on my neck.

We woke up to a clear and sunny morning. Of course. We left our bathroom shelters and took sight on the carnage of our campsite. Tents flat to the ground, except for my tent which was still standing but sitting in a pool of water. Large tree branches fallen. None onto tents, but seeing all the tree branches really hammered it home; last night was one tough storm.

Breakfast was a quick affair as everyone wanted to get out of the park, get riding and get to a church as soon as possible. Too bad there was still 100 miles of riding to go.

To top it off, the park ranger in the morning came by again and checked on the family in the RV if they were okay and made it through the storm. What about the 30 hooligans in tents with silverware as stakes? What about us? Though another park ranger did happen to find one of our tarps about a mile away in a tree.

Everyone had been under shelter during the night. Most of us were divided between the men’s and women’s restroom. A lucky few spread out in the van. Either way, it was a rough night.

After yesterday, I am not a fan of camping. The whole idea of camping is flawed. It seems that people go camping to be outside and in nature and escape; it’s a romantic notion. I don’t buy it. I think that people enjoy camping because they are in mutual misery with everyone else and bond over that. Bond over the realities of cooking, bathing, sleeping, living and how difficult and inconvenient it is in the outside and nature. 30 people should never go camping, it’s a guaranteed disaster. Natural disasters just add to the fun.