I made it to Minneapolis yesterday without any issues. Thanks to Linda for the ride to the airport at the pre-buttcrack of dawn, and to Kyle for picking me up in Minneapolis. I got Billy put together before the kids got out of school, and then walked with Mallory to get them. We had a great walk home with Harper talking to me a mile a minute.
Lani was waiting for us when we got home. We brought her bike around back, and Kyle made room in the shed for both bikes. I still had to unpack the duffle, and pack up the bike bags, including the box of food I had sent to the house. Got that done, and not too long after, Lani, Kyle, the kids, and I walked to Reverie (a great Vegan restaurant nearby) for dinner (Mallory, Marcy, and Miranda had gone to an art show).
Lani and I made our plans for an early morning start, and hit the sack.
Day 1
We got going to Cable, WI at 6:45. It was a three hour drive to the Warmshowers host where we would leave Lani’s car. It seemed to go by pretty fast, and we arrived about 10:00ish at Therese and Scott’s house (fun coincidence, I had a sister named Teresa, and I have a brother named Scott, and they have a daughter named Colleen!!!). It took awhile to get everything loaded on the bikes, and Lani had to prepare the car to be left for a month. Still, we were on the road at 11:30, which was an hour earlier than I had anticipated.
Ready to go!
Our hosts, Scott and Therese, and their friends, Doug and Maureen. They were going for a gravel ride. They rode with us part of the way back to the paved road to Cable. Thanks again to Scott and Therese!
Lani and I had about 5 miles to Cable, and the start of the route.
It looked like we would have about 21 miles of pavement to start with. Turns out we had a short connector bit of gravel in that 21 miles.
Lani on Bumblebee.
Back to pavement until we hit the gravel again at mile 26. The terrain was very much a rollercoaster, up and down with nothing too steep or too long. The climb profile was initiated 4 times, but the longest climb was 1/2 mile with an average grade of 3%.
We stopped at Twin Lakes Campground for some lunch, then continued on. We were hoping to get to a dispersed site at about 47 miles. We had more sections of gravel/dirt/sandy dirt.
Sandy dirt.
We hadn’t gotten any water. I still had about a liter. We stopped at a house to ask for some water. No one was home. We were just leaving, when an ATV came down the road. The guy stopped, and I told him we had just been checking to see if we could get water, but no one was home. Turns out, it was his cabin! He said, “You need water? I got water.” We followed Dave into the cabin and filled up our bottles. What a nice guy (and yet another case of it always working out).
We rode another 11 miles to the dispersed site on the route. It was a good thing we got water, because there’s no water here (well, there is a lake down the road, but we didn’t necessarily need more water for tonight or the morning). This spot is not exactly what I would call dispersed camping. We are camped literally on the road (but there is a locked gate, so no chance of cars.
Tomorrow we have a long day to Duluth, but we are confident we can make it. We did a mighty good job today doing 47 miles and starting at 11:30.
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