Day 67 Dawson to Clara City 60km

With a fond farewell to the gnomes, who appear to be the only ones up in Dawson early on Sunday morning, we look forward to a leisurely Sunday's ride. With a relatively short stint today into the mysterious Clara City, no helpful information could be found either online or on our map to give us any insight or idea of what to expect. Our tootling pace has increased with our fitness, and we quickly find ourselves in Montevideo, which has a very lazy Sunday feel to it. The Sunday paper, the Star Tribune, gives us much pleasure, it has been a long time between decent newspapers! And reading and sharing it in the shade in the really lovely city park of Montevideo makes for that real Sunday feeling. After a restorative lunch we make moves towards Clara City with the help of some local directions. Clara City, is not, as the name would suggest, a city! But a small town, dominated by an enormous, and I mean really enormous Farmers Elevator, which is serviced 24hrs by an industrial railway. And as this is harvest time, those huge, 100 carriage plus trains ran around the clock, shipping the grain out. Although Clara City is home to this massive bit of infrastructure, it does not have a campground, or any other facilities for tourists, tourism is not really what it is all about. But we are tired, and can't face the 20 miles to the next town, when the city park has a drinking fountain, a toilet, a picnic table and some green grass. So we spend the afternoon in this park, reading, playing trivial pursuit, eating and chatting, waiting for the cover of dark to set up the tent. The locals seem cautious of us, and no one approaches us for a chat. Let me just say that this is unusual for our experience of the US so far and it begins to worry us and we feel uncomfortable. Thankfully as dusk falls, Rodger stops by, he is the manager of the public spaces in Clara City, and we so appreciate his welcoming gesture. He tells us we are free to camp in the park, and if the young patrolman Chris has an issue we are to tell him that "Rodger said we could stay"(!). Feeling much more at home we enjoy the final light of the day, and a childfree playground, by taking our turn on the big slide! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad