Day 36. Saginaw to Iron River, WI, 62 miles

The day dawns a bit earlier for me than planned because of traffic (that garbage truck, yo, what was that about?) and freight train noise, but it didn’t rain and my tent is dry. But also it is CHILLY! Like, 49 degrees! I snuggle deeper in the sleeping bag, which is cozy as can be, but eventually nature calls.

As I’m finishing packing up, the camp host comes trotting out of his house to offer me … rocks. He makes a crack about how the last thing I want is to carry around rocks on my bike, and it’s sort of true, but I have this lovely rose quartz Kathy gave me, and now he’s offering me Lake Superior agate, and I am touched and grateful. (Andrew, babe, please note that among the things I will ask you to take home after I see you are some rocks.)

I headed out on the unlovely US 2. This is the same US 2 I spent so many Montana miles on and the one I am avoiding taking through the U.P. itself. But it’s the way into the U.P., and I am on it until sometime Saturday. Its shoulder is generally decent, and what are you gonna do.

In the morning I entered the Lake Superior Basin, St. Louis Watershed, which explained the lack of climbing and all the luscious water. But for a mild headwind, it was grand.

As I get into Porter, I come the closest I think I’ve been to a water tower, unless Joyce and I saw this same one on a previous tour, which we might have. They are alien-looking objects.

Minnesota being what it is, as I near Duluth I am treated to a lavishly-signed bike route that will take me across the bridge over the St. Louis Bay. This also means I am nearing big water at long last!!

Outside Duluth, I stopped at a Whole Foods that is almost certainly not a, you know, Whole Foods. Maybe like Gary’s Whole Foods on 89th & Broadway? Anyway. I got strawberries! I wasn’t going to because they are so impractical and it was a quart, but then I smelled them. And I sampled organic celery and got fancy Icelandic yogurt and other bougie snacks and was pleased.

Because I’m headed south, under Lake Superior, I am bypassing Duluth itself and crossing to Superior, WI. I’m sort of relieved to be heading south—I don’t take my leggings off until noon because of the chill in the air. And not only am I heading south, but I am headed DOWN. Coming into Superior across a major engineering feat of a bridge, with its own ped/biker companion bridge, my elevation tally suddenly looks like this.

The bridge was wild; once I was on it, it was too high and windy and loud for me to stop for pictures, save the essential bay shot.

Duluth-Superior combined is 110k or so, but Superior is the smaller city—just over 26k. Still, the whole thing felt big again, not in a bad way, and definitely in a more monied way than Fargo-Moorhead. That’s an impression based on where I’m riding through and may be incorrect. Fargo-Moorhead was much bigger—nearly 170k combined, but I was in the outskirts of the bigger sib city. Superior is odd, because it retained its Main Street, I think, as US 2. So on one side of the “street” are these gracious old bricks buildings, storefronts occupied, very well preserved. On the other side, there are low, crappy box buildings with auto parts stores and medical clinics.

I met all my commerce needs except for postcards—they are very hard to find now, like maps suddenly became awhile back, which is irritating because mom supplied me generously with postcard stamps, which have proven difficult to find in previous years—and headed out of town on a trail. A trail! Not as nice as my Minnesota trail, but that was peak Midwestern trail, so.

The trail gets more rugged and then devolves into sandy gravel, and I get back on 2. I pass through Iron River, the Cheers of towns.

And then, after a kind of unpleasant 1.5 miles of deep, sandy, hilly gravel I make it to the Wildwood Campground, a somewhat neglected but quiet private campground on a small lake, and I settle down for some freedom in a can.

I get myself buttoned up for rain overnight and settle into my tent.