Just after sunset yesterday I was treated to a spectacular harvest moon rising up and over the river. I heard lots of coyotes in the evening but other than a few cows' mooing noises everything was utterly silent all night. I woke a little before sunrise and got to see the.sun break the horizon for the last time this summer. The temperature was cool but not cold, and the wind shifted to south. Temperature flew upwards as soon as the sun was up. It became hot quickly and I had to shed everything before 9:30. The wind wasn't that intense and I looked forward to a store or at least some water in Marmarth. I rolled into town and checked out the park first and it had good faucet water. The gas station and store were closed and had a for sale sign on the door. There was a little restaurant but it was closed, and there was a little tobacco and espresso store that probably had some snacks but I decided I had enough food to make it to Camp Crook, 55 miles more. I was surprised that the road was paved but I figured out why soon. There were workers installing a new pipeline and tons of oil and gas related stuff everywhere beside the road for miles There were random pipes sticking up out of the ground, with huge flames coming out, I had heard of such things but never saw it in person till now. They were quite hot even from far away. And by this point in the day the ambient temperature was already hot. I am very glad I filled up with lots of water because I needed almost all of it. It's deceiving here, the humidity is low but with the temperature at around 85 I sweated a lot, but it dries almost right away. The wind picked up and did shift a bit to west or southwest but this didn't really help with the prairie so open, a crosswind is just as bad as a headwind. The terrain was again pretty rolling which was fun but the wind was hard to escape. The pavement ran out after only a few miles then I was back to reddish gravel. In pretty good shape but with occasional washboard. I crossed into South Dakota for the first time, which coincidentally came right at a creek bridge and the gravel changed over to a more whitish grey color that reminded me of north Georgia. I had to stop a couple times for a snack break on the rare occasion I found shade. At length I made it to Camp Crook feeling ok but pretty low on food and water. I made a lap through town, didn't see an obvious faucet at the park so I tried the Methodist church and they had fantastic cold faucet water. I filled everything to the brim and drank my fill as well. I rode back and decided to check out the only store. It was tucked away in a little room next to a service garage, and the owner and his son saw me and went in with me, him obviously doing double duty with the shop as well, as evidenced by all the grease all over his shirt and arms. He was nearly as filthy as I was! He was really nice and was interested in my trip. We chatted a bit about the difference in heat of here versus the humidity of Georgia. I bought a good amount of food to get me through tonight and hopefully only half of tomorrow. He wished me well and I left to go sit underneath some shade and eat a little something before continuing on. It was really hot in the sun and I had only around 20 more miles to the first public land access which was just exposed grassland. I didn't have much energy to want to look for a patch of land that contained a tree so I just rode a ways down into the pasture and setup kinda behind a little natural rise in the terrain. Sunset was pretty tonight. Back in Big Sky country for one more night.