Madison to Wales - 59 miles
Average Speed - tbd

We enjoyed a late evening last night with our hosts.

Late means anything past 8 PM. We slept on a very comfy futon with decent pillows, but not for long enough as morning arrived way too early. again. I thought maybe somebody turned on a light for something. No, it was just Mr. Cheery Sunshine.

We got a fairly early start, but our finish wasn’t anything to write home about. The day was humid and windy, like many of the days we have experienced in the past months, so we didn’t push ourselves, not that we ever do. This is fun after all. We made our way out of Madison and found the trailhead of the Glacier Drumlin State Trail.

We really appreciated the shade and protection from the wind that this trail offer. We absolutely despised the thick gravel that covered many sections of the trail. We couldn’t figure out why anybody would think that a thick covering of gravel is an appropriate treatment for a bicycling trail. I panicked at one point when Robert yelled that there was a patch of thick gravel and stopped in my tracks without clipping out of my pedals. My knee injury from the very first day had just healed recently, but I messed it up again with this latest stunt.

The eastern end of the trail is in much worse condition than the western end. Bridges have rotting woods with large sections missing. Getting up to the bridge platform often requires mountain biking maneuvers. I am blaming those horrid bridges with their slivered decking for giving me my third flat of the trip.

Imagine our surprise when the trail became paved after Dousman. I had forgotten that the ranger in Lake Mills had mentioned that.

Earlier this morning, something made me think about the Warm Showers List so I checked it and noticed two potential hosts along our route. I called the closest, even though they preferred 24-hours notice. How serendipitous that I remembered this option. We are nicely showered and presentable and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with our hosts Mary Jo and Patrick. We are their first guests, although they have been list members for a long time. They are so close to the trail that we figured that they would have many hosting requests, but that hasn’t happened yet. So, anybody who goes through Wales(not that one in the UK), be sure to contact these wonderful hosts. Maybe even convince them to start their x-country tour.

Tomorrow we go to Milwaukee and take the ferry to Muskegon. We will be in really familiar territory then and we will be on EST. Now, that’s real progress.

Did I mention that just as we arrived that the skies opened up full-force?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 7:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.