Category: 5. Minnesota and Wisconsin

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.

OKAY. I’d like to open by acknowledging—thank you Josh, courtesy of mom telling us through our whole childhood—that under a tree is NOT the safest place to stand when there is lightning. I was hiding from rain, not lightning, since the latter didn’t seem to be striking close, but as my loving older brother points out, lightning tends to find high things. Like trees. So please enjoy my magical moment without emulating it. Thank you.

After all my concern about making the miles to meet Andrew, I’ve ended up a day ahead of schedule, and yesterday I did some rejiggering to give myself shorter days through Saturday. That, paired with a relatively mild headwind all day (grrr), means that I don’t need to be on the road at sunrise, so I set the alarm for 6 rolling my eyes at myself because I haven’t woken up later than 5:30 in weeks.

I wake up once at 2:30 to the muffled sounds of some fishermen calling it a night over by the boat launch. The next time I roll over it’s 5, and I’m ready to be up. I really have been sleeping better outside; I’m not sure why.

As I get up and go about my morning routine—ablutions, tent drying, putzing around—a pickup truck drives down to the beach. A portly older gentleman gets out and proceeds to go for a swim. A few minutes later an old car comes jouncing down the park road with a fishing pole attached to a special roof rig, and the driver installs himself at the end of the pier; I’m pretty sure it’s raingear guy from last night. What I’m trying to say is the people of Hill City love and use their lakefront park, and I am here for it.

I don’t roll out until around 8, giving the tent drying time and enjoying a leisurely morning. I stop briefly to take a picture of this sign I’d noticed on the way in.

The route is on a fairly quiet road for the morning. Googlemaps tries to put me onto an ATV trail, but I take one look at it and decide to chance the road; Joyce and I have suffered greatly through ATV trails before, and I don’t need suffering. My morning’s ride is mostly flat and low and damp, with abundant sturdy marsh grasses that barely rustle in the wind. The headwind, that is.

I plan for a little sit at the Jacobson roadside park, next to the Mississippi River, but when I get there it is a swampy and mosquito-infested Bad Place. It is also the terminus of the trail Googlemaps recommended, which makes me glad to have made the choices I did.

I stop on the bridge briefly for a shot of the Mississippi, not looking its grandest.

I’m back in familiar ditchweed territory now, with rabbitfoot clover and birds foot trefoil and spotted napweed galore.

Later in the day I cross the much more impressive-looking St. Louis River.

The flatness goes away and I start rolling again, because that is how it works. I’m still hanging around 1300-1350 feet, up and down and up and down. I’m kind of accustomed to it by now, and I have more equanimity than I used to. Maybe patience? Debatable, and probably not a judgement to be made without external observation and verification. But in any case, I see the hills coming and raise my eyebrows or mumble under my breath “oh really,” but unless it’s the end of the riding day and I’m over it, I mostly just do it without internal whining. To Jajah’s comment: yeah, my legs are kind of amazing machines right now—I’m so impressed with them and what they are proving capable of.

Late afternoon I roll into the Saginaw Park & Campground (not the chic Michigan Saginaw—the doesn’t-really-much-exist Minnesota Saginaw), and it is … fine. It’s right off US 2, sandwiched between freight train tracks and US 2, in fact. I can’t figure out the site numbering, and the camp host isn’t home, but none of the tent sites are taken, so I just grab one and and hang my tent on the clothesline for a good drying out before I set it up.

After relaxing for a bit, I set up the tent and get ready to shower, and as I’m trying to figure out how to get the bathroom code a younger couple drives up and gets out looking for the host. They have also reserved a site, but the one they reserved appears to be next to the host’s house, and they do not want this because they have a Bluetooth speaker and drinks planned. I am set up away from the host’s house, and the only possible sites are near me, and I am less than thrilled. We chat, and I let them know they should set up where they please, that I go to sleep early but can easily move my tent. The dude makes me a little edgy; he’s a bit rough looking, jittery, and overly friendly and talkative, and I am looking for a quiet night. Having gotten the bathroom code from a passing guest, I head in for a shower, and when I come out they have indeed set up one site over from me. I decide to move, and I let them know—friendly and accommodating, just don’t want to disturb their evening and I go to sleep so early—and dude offers to help me move my stuff, offers me a beer, is very nice. I decline the offers, but it’s really no sweat and I move with no animosity hoping it won’t be too loud.

My new site is also perfectly fine, and when the host rolls up I explain we’ve swapped sites around and he’s untroubled. I head back into the bathrooms for some device charging, and while I’m there the gal comes in and we chat for a bit. When I come out 20 minutes later, I find a pile of snacks on my picnic table: pistachios and jerky and Dot’s pretzels. I am touched and feel like a jerk, and I go over to thank them, and they’re all “you’re doing a thing and you need protein!” Good lord, people. They ask if the music is too loud, which it is not, and I head back to my tent for bed. I hear them once when I wake up in the middle of the night, maybe talking on the way to the bathroom, but they are no disturbance. Unlike the garbage truck that shows up at 3:30 but does not, mysteriously, actually empty the dumpster. File this one away under Maybe You Shouldn’t Automatically Be So Uptight, Sarah.

The morning started with a continental breakfast courtesy of the Super 8; I ate two mini muffins, grabbed a banana, hard boiled egg, apple, and mandarin (fun treat!), and hit the road at 6.

And by the road I mean THE TRAIL. The PAVED trail. I had been seeing all these lovely walking trails, but had not dared hope there would be one for me, and then all of a sudden I had a morning of 20 miles on tree-shaded, abundantly-benched, glorious trail.

It is, a local cyclist told me, the first Rail-to-Trail trail in the U.S., opened the year of my birth (and the bicentennial). I choose not to fact-check because I enjoy this truth, and it is harmless to believe so. I tell some runners I pass how much I love Minnesota. I announce to the morning in general that I love Minnesota. I stop and take selfies on bridges. I am giddy with Minnesota.

There are towns on this trail, with shaded pavilions and bathrooms and the like.

It was cool and lovely, and I knew the whole day wouldn’t be like this, so I reveled as thoroughly as I could. It was hard not to stop at every thoughtfully-placed bench and listen to the wind sighing in the trees (in my favor for the moment, the likely sine qua non of the a.m. rhapsody), but instead I just rode at a leisurely pace and enjoyed the heck out of it.

At some point post-trail, heading temporarily north—we’re back to going around things, though mostly lakes now 💙—I hit a non-town called Whipholt. It had no commerce or even a place of worship, best I could see, but it had a lovely little roadside beach on the unappealingly-named Leech Lake.

Inspired by a guy down the beach who stopped mid-run to admire the view and then remove his shirt to take a selfie with it as a backdrop, I also documented myself in the moment.

I got to the Hill City campground late afternoon, not expecting a whole lot. The host had called me to let me know the site I’d reserved was on a hill, and if I wanted to change it up for one on level ground right by the lake I was welcome to. Thank you, sir! When I got there he set me up with a site by the beach, and I hung out for a bit drinking Gatorade and watching folks of all ages frolic and gambol in the water. I knew it was going to rain, so I figured I’d wait to set up my tent; as it turned out, it rained twice anyway, but I managed to get the tent set up during the hour between. I kept all my stuff under the pavilion and made dinner and organized myself and watched the rainstorm from there, a pleasant place for all those activities. Two women sat down by the water chilling and talking through both rains, and a guy fishing off the dock threw on some rain gear and kept right on fishing. Minnesotans are undeterred by a summer rainstorm, a quality I admire. (They’re also undeterred by feet of snow, which I admire even more.)

And then this!

And this.

Hill City Park turned out to be pleasant surprise, and I tucked myself in for the night cozy and pleased to be sleeping outside.

The day started very Minnesota: I was supposed to wake to a few hours of morning thunderstorms—Sara had let me know the showerhouse was concrete and I was welcome to take shelter in it—but when I woke up at 5 there was no sign of them.

The wind was to be turning in my favor, so I packed up a bit more slowly than usual and didn’t get out until around 7. I spent the first half of the morning back on SR 10, the busiest road I’ll be on in Minnesota. In fact, Googlemaps was so averse to putting me on SR 10 to get to Buffalo Creek State Park yesterday that it told me there was no way to get there from here, and I had to call the park to confirm it was accessible by bike. The confused-sounding guy who answered (on a Sunday morning! I love Minnesota!) told me that yes, cyclists stay there frequently, and it’s right off 10. It’s not the prettiest or quietest road, but its shoulder was wide, and frankly it was kind of thrilling to be on a road with towns and gas stations and other signs of life. And I turned off it after 30 miles and onto a much quieter and lovelier county road.

Sara had mentioned to me the enjoyable and uncommon flatness of my previous day and warned me that was valley topography, not my life forevermore. But she said it so nicely! And indeed the road began to rock and roll again just a few miles in, ultimately giving me a day of 1600+ feet of climbing, with 300 feet less of descent. But there were TREES! Trees shading the road, trees cutting the wind, trees cooling things off, trees being lush and gorgeous. And lakes! So much water again, creeks with currents and big blue lakes. Minnesota, could I love you more?

There were charming turnoffs and trailheads, and I resisted few of them, stopping for a quick bite or some water or a butt rest.

My mellow was harshed in the last twenty miles when someone decided to rumble strip the center of the relatively narrow shoulder nearly right down the middle, but a little closer to the berm, so I was forced to ride between the rumble strip and the white line. Grouse. I always try to imagine the logic behind the idiosyncratic rumble-stripping methodologies I’ve encountered, but this one was special. I also thought to call ahead to the campground, even though it was a Monday and it could not possibly be full, and somehow it was. Minnesotans love to recreate, and I can’t be mad at that. I ended up at the much less charming Super 8, which at least gave me a chance to dry my shoes, which got soaked in a thunderstorm that hit in my last eight miles. But whatever, I’m in Minnesota! And it had the nicest view I’ve ever gotten in a crappy motel.

So, after checking out the scene in Park Rapids, I hung out at the motel and washed some clothes and took care of other business before settling in for the night.