And back to Wisconsin
If I had packed up four minutes sooner I would have had my tent in the bag before the rain started. Four minutes. Instead, I stood under a tree waiting for the rain to pass for at least fifteen minutes if not more. Since this is really the first rain I’ve had, I can’t complain too much. I managed to get my tent in the bag mostly dry, loaded my rainfly into the cargo net on the outside of my trailer, and headed to breakfast. Since I was at a city campground, it was less than a kilometer to breakfast, a nice perk when it’s 55 and misting.
After a full breakfast I went over to the coffeehouse for internet. Usually I feel guilty for wasting a perfectly good biking day on the internet, but the rain washed those pangs away. I managed to notice a used book section in the back of the knicknacks section of the store before I left, and picked up two good books, Willa Cather’s My Antonia and a novel that appears to be about a woman on a bike tour. I think that the book cover designer would flunk Chip Kidd’s class, should he teach one, because there is no indication that this book is about bicycling on the cover. While it may be intended to be a Great American Novel that happens to be on a bicycle, if it wants to get the attention of people who don’t know if they believe it’s the next Great American Novel, but do like books about bicycling, it should be more forward.
I decided to backtrack (gasp!) on the bike trail, because I didn’t feel like dealing with a major highway that intersected an Interstate. There were two big hills immediately off the bike trail, but then the Minnesota countryside settled into slightly rolling trees and fields. Not incredibly interesting, but pleasant. Except for the ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump of my wheels on the cracks of the pavement. I tried to decide if my smaller wheels were more susceptible to the divots, and decided they probably were. Eit.
I almost hit a deer in the road. A cute little spotted fawn. It was close enough and sudden enough that I hit the brakes, but far enough away that I didn’t really need to. It probably weighed the same as my bicycle and myself, so hitting it would have been slightly traumatic.
When I crossed the border back into Wisconsin, I waffled a bit whether to take the green marked county road, or head to a grey back road that would significantly shorten my route. I decided to follow the county road, since I didn’t want to deal with gravel or steep ups and downs. Ha. The county road was undergoing construction, so there were large sections of gravel, and it had at least two big ups and downs over rivers. I never push my bike except up steep gravel hills. There were two here. Gah.
Then off in the distance I saw a blinking red train crossing light. After being caught by two loooong trains in downtown Kearney, not to mention the handful of times in Brownwood when a train was between me and my motel bathroom, I dreaded the potential wait. But the crossing was almost a mile away, and the train was moving quickly, so it got its 125 cars across before I had to slow down. (Also, I was dragging by that point.)
As I was biking I was craving an apple. Crisp, tart, juicy, there’s a reason they are the default fruit of America. But there were no stores between me and my campsite, so no apple for me. Except…there was an apple tree in the state park between me and the waterfall, with a few windblown (or squirrel jiggled) apples on the ground. I picked up two. Excellent.
The Pattison State Park contains at least two sets of waterfalls. I went to the larger, more easily accessible of the two. Apparently they are the fourth highest waterfalls in Wisconsin, or the Midwest, or something. And they are pretty. But even more attractive, I thought, was the view over the valley through which I had biked that afternoon. Looking out over the slightly misty treetops was a view that’s not common in Wisconsin.
Then I amused myself by taking surreal arty photos of reflections in the lake.