Second Flat

Clara City to Winsted – 70 miles
Average speed – 10.2 mph

The storms raged all last night, but at least we weren’t in the tent, which at one point seemed our only option. At 4 am, the lightening continued, so I wasn’t sure if we would be free of rain by the time we got up. The storm knocked out the electric at some point during the night, so our plan to get up at 5 changed a bit. With all the clouds in the sky, the morning didn’t dawn brightly as it usually does. We really wanted to beat both the heat and the headwinds forecast for the day.

We had bagels with peanut butter for breakfast, with the intention of stopping for a second breakfast in Cosmos. The first track of “Music from the Cosmos” started playing every single time that I saw the sign for Cosmos.

It was already hotter this morning than it had been many other afternoons. We stopped at a gas station for good refreshments and continued on until Robert got a flat tire. Flat number 2 – 1800 miles into the trip, the result of running over glass.
Believe it or not; it was the front tire that went flat.

When we reached Cosmos and that music started playing again, we were directed to the place with the best breakfast in town. There really weren’t too many options in such a small town and we never would have gone to the bar to find breakfast in the first place. We asked the bartender about alternate routes to get us to Winsted. She knew of none, so we asked at the post office and were advised to stay on 7, because it was easy to get lost if we decided to follow the labyrinth of back roads. We had been hearing about Winstock, and that was the reference point for all the advice that we were given. Winstock appears to be the country music version of Woodstock. Lucky for us, we just missed this big event by one day.

We carried on horrid Hwy 7 toward Hutchinson, but just short of Hutchinson, we came upon some detour signs. Since it said that the road was open to local traffic, we decided to ignore the detour, mostly because it would put us even more into the wind than we had been. When we came to the part of the road that was totally impassable, we noticed a sign for the Luce Line Trail to our right. Now, we had seen a snowmobile trail running parallel to us for several miles. We followed the sign, which led to a park with a map of the trail. The trail actually started in Cosmos. Not one person had mentioned that as an option when we inquired about alternate routes. We knew that the trail did start in Winsted from the information that we found on the website. We jumped on the trail at Hutchinson and rode it the rest of the day. At Silver Lake, we were ready for more refreshments and found Molly’s Cafe. We had the best root beer float and milkshake of the trip and informed the waitress of this trivial fact. I don’t think that we have had more than two root beer floats or milkshakes, so our sample size is definitely not valid, but these were definitely very good. Maybe it was the dust from the trail or the 90+ degree temperature. The waitress insisted that they were so good because they make everything with love. Guess that works.

The trail surface is “natural” from Cosmos to Winsted. It resembled a tractor trail on a farm, but protected us from the wind and the sun. The surface wasn’t much worse than the shoulder of Route 7. It was a relief to get off the trail and into Winsted, which had only one very small motel, which only had smoking rooms available.

We headed to the library and asked the librarian about trails that connect to the Luce Line as we approach the Twin Cities. She recommended some sites, but said that none of them include all the trails. At least we had a general idea of where we would be headed tomorrow, which would be another early day. Tomorrow will be the first day that we have been to a big city in many weeks. It should be interesting.