Day 0: August 4th

So here I am at Fort Stevenson once again for CANDISC.  This will be my 5th … or, no … 7th time?  I’m not sure.  The pre-ride excitement is the same as it is every year.  People everywhere are unloading their cars, pitching their tents, and assembling their bicycles in preparation for the beginning of the ride at sunrise tomorrow morning.

This year I will be riding the tour with Justin and Nichole, two friends from Wisconsin.  My usual riding buddy, Jesse, couldn’t be here.  I know a ton of people who ride the tour every summer.  Every time I show up at CANDISC it is like a family reunion.

After I set up my tent I started to walk toward the tent where supper was being served.  Immediately, I began recognizing people.  I saw Ed and Vi from Kansas.  They are always on CANDISC.  Jeanette Dolan was also there, and I ate supper with Chuck, a guy I know from Bismarck.

After supper I stopped at the reconstructed guard house on the shore of Lake Sakakawea.  The cannon pictured above is located in the guard house. The guard house contains a museum and gift shop, so I browsed the selection and learned a little about Fort Stevenson, one of my favorite state parks.  Apparently the purpose of Fort Stevenson was to protect the Three Affiliated Tribes (the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nations.  See http://www.mhanation.com/ for information) from the Sioux, to protect mail routes, and to protect travelers between Fort Totten and Fort Buford.  I found all of this fascinating.  Even though I have lived in this area my whole life, I am admittedly ignorant of what it was like here in the not-so-distant past, when these forts performed important duties.  Fort Totten, Fort Buford… I know these places.  I’ve been to all of them before, and I’ve heard bits and pieces of the story.  By looking around in the museum, I realized that the tour’s route was taking me on a path that, if I paid attention and read a little bit along the way, might just tie some of this history together in my mind and help me to experience my home state in a whole new way.

To that end I purchased a copy of “Military Life in Dakota,” the journal of the first commander of Fort Stevenson, Régis de Trobriand.  It looks like it will be interesting campground reading material.