August 25, 2026 - Fort Collins, Colorado to Sioux Falls, South Dakota

We left home this morning just after 8:00am and four states and 13+ hours later we arrived in Sioux Falls on our first day of Tobey’s Mississippi River Trail bike ride! We headed north to Cheyenne, Wyoming leaving Colorado behind. We’ve driven this route so many times, but I am still always amazed at the bluffs when we hit Wyoming.
We crossed into Nebraska and it was funny how much greener the landscape was.
We headed north and just past Alliance we spotted Carhenge, which we had never seen before! (We did visit another Carhenge in Texas!) It was built in 1987 by Jim Reinders and 35 of his family members as a memorial to his late father. Carhenge is a replica of England’s Stonehenge and is made entirely from Vintage American automobiles covered in gray spray paint. They held a “mural festival” in early August and artists from around the world came and painted designs on many of the cars.



After our brief stop we were on our way, north and east. It was interesting that we drove along some of the roads we took when Tobey and his friend, Phil, rode the “Cowboy Trail” across Nebraska in 2021. The trail still looks as bad as when they rode it five years ago! We also drove part of the way on US Hwy. 83 which Phil bicycled a while back. US Highway 83 is an 1,885-mile north-south route stretching from the Canadian border in North Dakota to the Mexican border in Texas. It is famously nicknamed the "Road to Nowhere" for its quiet, desolate, and isolated stretches across the American heartland. We didn’t see many towns on our stretch of the road so the name seems appropriate!

We traveled on and on and on – it seemed like forever but it was ONLY 588 miles – until we arrived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where we spent the night. We passed field after field of sunflowers and watched the moon rising. We finally settled into our camp area at 10:00pm. We headed right to bed so we can get an early start in the morning.