Minneapolis to Muskegon
Minneapolis to Red Wing – 57 miles
Average Speed – 9.8 mph
We had a fabulous visit with Christine and Mitch and really appreciated their hospitality, especially since it came with a nice comfy bed and good pillows. I forgot to get photos last night, so Mitch is absent as we figured it better not to wake him so early.
The system of bike paths around Minneapolis absolutely amazed us and frustrated us as well. It would be an easy city to get around without a car if you know the city. For tourists like us, we had to stop and check the semi-adequate $10 cycling map frequently, especially once we left St. Paul. It’s been a long time since we had to navigate a big city.
There were definitely advantages to having only one option for leaving town.
By the time we reached Hastings, we had already done over 30 miles and Hastings doesn’t seem far out of the Twin Cities at all. Of course, it involved a nice climb and Route 61 had absolutely no shoulder beyond the bridge over the Mississippi. Angry drivers honked wanting us to abandon the road, which we do have a legitimate right to use. Robert spotted Las Margaritas where we stopped for lunch and for dos margaritas.
The heat and wind intensified. Does this sound like a recording, yet? We took it easy and stopped several times to cool off. Shortly after our last stop, I suddenly felt what I thought was a dry cleaning bag tangled in my leg. It wasn’t a bag, but just air hissing out of my tire. So, at about 1950 miles, I get my second flat, which was caused by a rip in the sidewall of the rear tire.
The repair process didn’t go well. The first inner tube got pinched and the second tube at a slit in it (and it was a new tube). We hadn’t repaired the old tubes, so only had two new tubes, which both failed, so it was time to patch a few holes. The patch kit didn’t work very well at all. The patches wouldn’t stick until the third try with the third patch.
Fortunately, Red Wing has a fully-stocked bicycle shop, so Robert ventured out and bought a new tire, new tubes and a new patch kit. I will have to be very attentive when we start approaching the 3000 mile mark as my flats have occurred about every thousand miles mas o meno.
In spite of our early start this morning, it took us all day to get here. Surely, tomorrow will be much easier. That’s what we say everyday. Since it is our last day in Minnesota, it has to be a good day, even though the forecast calls for continued heat and wind in our faces.
Being on this side of the Mississippi sure feels good. The river up here doesn’t resemble the river in Memphis or any other place down south. It’s much narrower here and probably wouldn’t be referred to as the “Big Muddy”. I read that 30% of entire length of the Mississippi is in Minnesota, which makes sense considering how much it meanders.
Red Wing to Winona – 69 miles
Average speed – 11.1
Our Pleasant Dinner Last Night
We stayed at the Parkway Motel and had to use the lobby to get a wi-fi connection. The smell of curry wafted from the owner’s residence, connected to the office. We mentioned how wonderful the food smelled and he asked us if we liked Indian food. When we thought about it, we realized that we have seen very few Indian restaurants in our travels so far. We did our online stuff and a few minutes later, the owner came out with two dishes of vegetable biryani.
What a great treat it was.
Meeting other tourists
Robert, Dave and Bill
Had we not started out late today, we would have missed meeting Dave and Bill who are bicycling long distance to bring attention to global climate issues. Although I had been in touch with Bill long ago with some route suggestions for getting to Toledo, I didn’t know what their itinerary was. So imagine our surprise when the first long distance tourists that we have met turn out to be Dave and Bill. They gave a presentation at MVCDS where Robert taught for 26 years. They remarked that they had not seen any touring cyclists since the C&O Trail. We had expected to see others as well and guessed that we would meet somewhere in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Guess that this counts. I am sure that they had a nice ride into Minnesota with the wonderful tail wind today.
2000 miles
Just outside of beautiful Weaver, which didn’t have the cold refeshments that we had anticipated, we hit the 2000 mile mark. The ride today was very scenic and reminded us of the headlands of the East Cape of New Zealand, the fjords of Norway and the heat of Mexico.
Lake Pepin – do not confuse with Jacques Pepin
The temperature hit 90 again and it seems that the winds were also about 90 mph out of the southeast. Gosh, we were heading directly southeast.
Finally in Winona
Today is our last in Minnesota. We cross into Wisconsin tomorrow. The Steamboat Festival is going on here in Winona. Hopefully, we will see some of that when we leave as our accommodations are not convenient to the riverfront and I have no desire to either walk or ride a few miles into town today.
Winona MN to Sparta WI – 61 miles
Average Speed – 10.6 mph
Good intentions pave the road to hell and our road is golden. We didn’t leave again until after 8. Some days we just don’t move too quickly. We went to downtown Winona where we thought we might get a glimpse of some of the steamboats, since this is the time of the Steamboat Festival. Well, it seems that the boats won’t actually arrive until later today. But, we did get to see one of the famous blue herons.
We crossed the bridge over the Mississippi which brought us into Wisconsin.
We wouldn’t be traveling on many roads today because of the extensive network of trails in Wisconsin, which might offer some shade and keep us out of the wind. Our first trail started just a short way from Winona. We had checked it out online and followed the directions to the trailhead, which had little to do with reality. We went farther than the website indicated and turned around before we got too far away from the parking lot that we were looking for. Although the parking lot was supposedly right on Route 35, it was down a short gravel road. We finally got on the Great River Trail and then toured the Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge, where we spotted an eagle on the opposite bank of the river.
The trail snaked around the refuge and finally came to a more direct segment of the trail, which led us to the town of Trempealeau. The heat and humidity already affected us after just these first 20 miles, so we pedaled over to the Coffee Attic for refreshments and to buy our trail passes. Right next to the Coffee Attic is La Fleur Jardin, which shares the same building. It turns out that Jill from the Coffee Attic and Lois from La Feur Jardin are neighbors in real life as well. After finishing our iced coffee and pop, we chatted with Jill and Lois and then met a fellow cyclist. She was traveling from north of Minneapolis to Cheboygan, Michigan for her son’s birthday party. Her husband sagged her, so she had very few things attached to her bicycle. She covered much more territory than we do in a day.
In Onalaska, we stopped for lunch and then continued our journey on the La Crosse Trail.
The heat intensified, so we took it easy all the way to Sparta, our destination for the evening.
We are staying with the family of Peggy, who is married to one of Robert’s former students. We have the perfect camping spot in their big backyard.
Tomorrow, we continue on the trails, so we should have some shelter from the heat and wind.
Sparta to Reedsburg – 60+ miles
Average speed – TBA
Bob, Our Host
We camped for the first time last night in the backyard of Bob and Kathy. The weather was ideal and the experience brought back memories of the last time that I had camped on Put-in-Bay. We had done a weekend tour to the island and I had great difficulty crawling out through the vestibule. Later I had other back problems and surgery, which the positive thinking surgeon warned me not to get my hopes up and gave me a rather poor prognosis. Well, I fooled him. Instead of being that person who would always have difficulty walking, I am cycling across the country and walking very well.
We thought that we were starting out early, but packing up the tent and equipment takes more time than leaving a motel. We wanted to reach our destination before the predicted rain arrived. Shortly after leaving Sparta, we encountered the first long tunnel of the day.
Its pitch darkness interfered with our sense of balance and depth perception. We walked through the tunnel, a rather strange experience.
Shortly after leaving the tunnel, we arrived in Norwalk, where we had breakfast. We had heard thunder rumbling, but figured that it was simply a passing phenomenon. Before we finished breakfast, buckets of rain fell. We waited for over an hour hoping that the storm would pass, but some other customers said that the updated weather report forecast rain for the entire day. This was totally different from yesterday’s forecast of afternoon showers. Obviously, other people heard the same forecast as we did because just as we left a large group came from the opposite direction and found shelter in the covered picnic shelter next to the restaurant.
Exiting the second tunnel
Riding in the rain is better when it is warm, but still a dirty job.
We pedaled on through the rain and just a short while later a deer jumped out from the side of the trail just in front of my bike. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t get a photo, but I was more concerned about hitting the animal. A few weeks ago we had read about motorcylists who had died when they hit deer. Granted, they are traveling faster than us, but running into anything would be devastating.
Eventually, the rain quit and the day became unbearably humid. We had many diversions to keep our minds off the heat. We met many interesting people along the trail today, which made our slow and long day worthwhile.
Us Biking Along the Sparta-Elroy Trail
Each trailer had its very own fan. I wanted to ride in one.
Along the 400 Trail
Getting to our destination, Reedsburg, happened many hours after our departure. Our days seem to stretch longer and longer everyday, although we aren’t exactly increasing our mileage. Tomorrow, we will make it to Madison.
Reedsburg to Madison – 55 miles
Average Speed – 10.7 mph
The title of this post pretty much sums up the day.
I met with Judy K. today, who pointed out that they call those the Baraboo Mountains, those things that we climbed over today. We caught up with each other at the appropriately named Weary Traveler.
Baraboo has a circus museum, which we could see from the road. I don’t like the circus, so I am definitely one who would run away from the circus. Well, today, we pedaled away from it and not so quickly due to the conditions.
Tonight a former student, David, and his family are hosting us. It would be tempting to spend a few days here, but we must resist temptation.
At Merrimac, we crossed the river on the cable ferry.
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?
Wales to Milwaukee – 29 miles
Average Speed – 12.2 mph
It rained hard last night, but we were dry under the roof of Pat and Mary Jo.
Mary Jo insisted that we carbo-load for our big ride to Milwaukee, so she cooked up some pasta and veggies. We discussed her proposed x-country tour that Pat will join when he adds a motor to his bicycle. Like me, Pat hates hills. Even though the computer says that we have gained a total of 43,000 feet for this trip – I think that half of that was on the Baraboo day – I still do not enjoy hills one bit.
Mary Jo gave us a map so that we could negotiate Milwaukee once we got over the two trails that we would be riding today. The big surprise today was that we had a tailwind. We made excellent time into Milwaukee. Originally, we had planned on touring Milwaukee and taking the 7pm ferry to Muskegon.
When we arrived at the ferry terminal just after 11:30 and noticed that it didn’t look too convenient to get downtown, we changed our plans. As luck would have it, there was space on the 12:30 ferry. The one real advantage of this was that we wouldn’t arrive in Muskegon late and have to ride in the dark.
We save much time and stress by crossing the lake instead of trying to go around Chicago. We find it interesting that many transcontinental tourers opt to take the ferry from Manitowoc to Ludington or even cross into the UP and shoot down the state of Michigan. We don’t have any real time constraints, but crossing in Manitowoc would require a few extra days of cycling. We did run into a cyclist the other day who started north of Minneapolis went down close to Madison and then was heading to Cheboygan via the UP. The great thing about bicycle touring is that you can go in any direction that you want. I am seriously considering a suggestion that somebody who was fighting many headwinds suggested – a tailwind tour. Head in the direction opposite the wind. Now, that would be interesting and would work in certain areas like the Midwest or East, where there are lots of road options. I can’t see it working in Montana or the Dakotas. I-90 and I-94 only run in two directions.
Just beyond the dock in Muskegon is a lake front bike path, which we opted to ride to our bed and breakfast. Now, since we have written a book about bed and breakfasts, we decided this would be a good option for the night. The White Swan Inn, one of the B&B’s in our book, Bed, Breakfast & Bike is just a few miles north of here, but really too far out of our way to be practical for this trip. We are staying at the Port City Victorian, which is located not too far from the ferry and popular with people using the ferry. Several of us seemed to arrive at about the same time – shortly after the ferry arrived.
We have a comfortable room on the second floor.
Breakfast is served at 9, which will mean a late start for us. We were simply going to pass on breakfast, but the innkeeper told us that another couple would have their breakfast at 8:20 and that we could join them, but shouldn’t expect too much. Since we don’t have too far tomorrow, we will just have a late departure and will try to sleep in for once. That will be a real treat.
After we got settled, we walked to a restaurant that serves only pizza and only with certain toppings. The pizza was quite good, but we ate a little early because we had an early lunch. Later, we went to forage for snacks and pop, yes POP, which the bed and breakfast has for sale in the hallway right across from our room. This is the first time that we have seen Vernors since that Safeway in Deer Lodge, Montana.
