Counties big as states

Sept. 6, Mission-Valentine, 40 miles, W breeze, 85/60—At the southern edge of the Rosebud reservation is the Rosebud casino and Nebraska border (trip miles: 685). I've heard about Valentine for a few days and look forward to a break from the trip. Valentine has all I need: great grocery store and public library, laundromat, and my first cloth-napkin restaurant. From the city park campground I can see where the Big Rock fire burned hillsides at the edge of the city in mid-July. Consuming dry cedars, pines, and grass, the fire rushed in and burned about 10 houses.

At the Niobrara Council on Main Street, Pam tells me about the area, introduces me to Stuart, chief ranger of the nearby Niobrara Wild and Scenic River, and urges me across the street to Plains Trading, a bookstore oasis run by Duane and Darlene.

Valentine is seat of Cherry County, which is larger than some eastern states. Since the county includes a piece of the sparse Sandhills, there's a lot of elbow room: population density is only one person per square mile. I gather Valentine can be rough at the edges, with several topless bars around Main Street. There's also a missing demographic of people in their 20s. Perhaps the remoteness explains why the high school, the Valentine Badgers, seems to have shamelessly lifted its logo from my college, the Wisconsin Badgers. The day I arrive some future Valentine Badgers, 5th- and 6th-graders, see me at the library with my bike. They insist I play football with them the next day, great fun except for the part where I wrench my shoulder in a big tackle scrum.

About six percent of Valentine is American Indian, but I don't understand anything about the town dynamics. Since my bike has gravitational pull, around town I meet a dozen or so people from the Rosebud (the reservation border is just 10 miles north), and one Pine Ridge Lakota. They're unfailingly friendly and they often part ways with a handshake or prayer (Christian and Lakota). Daren proudly shows me a new car loan he's just secured. But several are drinking from large bottles, one a woman just out of the hospital with a broken nose—she was beaten up by another woman on the street the night before. I don't even play a doctor on TV, but I find myself spouting off about the danger of secondary infection and advising her to rest.

My last morning at the city park I meet Barney, who is riding through all 48 states on his bike to support U.S. troops. He left Florida in February and though he's not keeping track of his mileage, must be over 6,000. Barney is on such a tight budget that his current bike (third of the trip) cost $40 at a thrift store. He does a lot of things I wouldn't dream of: he sleeps under park shelters wrapped in a coat and blanket, stores gear in two bags attached to his handlebars, wears no helmet and gloves, uses a road atlas rather than state highway maps, has no pump. He's also about the most determined person I've met on this trip.