Rest Day Addendum - Wildlife Along the Route

We are enjoying our rest days in Ingleside. A few of you have requested updates even on rest days, but I don't want to bore you with our leisure activities of sleeping in, watching the Tour de France, planning our next few biking days and enjoying my parents swimming pool. Tomorrow will probably look similar but we'll throw in a bike tune up/clean up in the garage.

As far as the pie goes - I'm in pie overload. After our pie-filled party on Monday, we had a delicious dinner and key lime pie at Homan's yesterday. Today I enjoyed a homemade butterscotch pie at my mom's house. Butterscotch Pie has a butter brickle type base with butterscotch pudding and whip cream topping - all in a baked pie crust. Yum! It reminds me of the butterscotch dipped cones at Dairy Queen.

I did want to type a bit about the wildlife and other roadside observations (well roadkill is a more appropriate term) that we've encountered thus far on our trip.

Washington: The roads in Washington were littered with an abnormally large amount of slugs (huge slugs - the size of your big finger), lug nuts and banana peels. We expected the slugs but the lug nuts? That was sort of frightening to see. Must be a lot of tires spontaneously flying off cars in Washington. The banana peels? Well, the logical explaination would be that we were trailing behind another bike touring group that was downing bananas left and right. Well, either that or a banana loving Sasquatch.

Idaho: We rode through most of Idaho on paved bike trails so the roadkill was fairly uneventful. We did encounter lots of signs warning us about the toxic soil. The signage warned us not to eat the soil or touch the soil and then eat food. Darn! I was looking forward to an Idaho mud pie.

Montana: I saw a Bald Eagle for the first time in Montana. That was amazing. Not amazing...all the dead skunks along the roadside. We saw a dead skunk about every mile or so, each with its own horrible facial expression. I wonder if they smell themselves after they are hit and that is the reason? In addition to dodging the dead Pepe LePew's, there were quite a few unknown fur patties. I don't think Montana has a roadkill clean up crew as there were severly decomposed animals along the road. They looked like mummified critters from prehistoric ages. Marc also noticed that there was an abnormally large amount of vodka bottles on the roads.

Wyoming: We weren't in Wyoming for very long but I do remember quite a few dead deer. With the deer, you can definitely smell them before you see them. Once you get a whiff of that awful putrid scent, you know deer guts are close. We also saw a dead fawn on the road, that was sad as it was so small - only about 20 lbs or so. Poor Bambi!

South Dakota: The wildlife changed quite a bit in South Dakota. We were now in the heart of prairie lands. There were tons of snakes, frogs and quail. In fact we were in South Dakota in the midst of quail hunting season. (Did you notice our photo of the world's largest quail?) In addition to the dead reptiles, Marc said that he noticed an abnormal amount of brake pads alongs the road. Who looses brake pads on the side of the road?

Minnesota: Minnesota had such terrible roads that I didn't pay attention to the wildlife. Lots of stinky hog farms though.

Wisconsin: We spent at least of 1/3 of our route on trails in Wisconsin. Wisconsin definitely had the best road/shoulder conditions of any of the states we had been through. Of course, with the exception of the Beltline Highway near Madision.