Sunday, June 21st – Mississippi River Trail, IA
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| Iowa tourism road sign... read left for the full test |
After all the rain yesterday, today was sunny with low humidity and
nice temperature. We did another section
of the river trail from Pikes Peak state park to Guttenberg, Iowa. We found some serious hills as we rode along the
bluffs and down to the river and back.
Just before descending into the town of Guttenberg, IA we saw this nice
little ditty along the side of the road like a “Burma Shave” ad:
“This is not a clever verse
We tried
and tried
it just got
worse
Our Iowa”
Total route – 37.5 miles
After the ride it was time to pack up and head into Minnesota. Our campground was a state campground
(Kruger) near Kellogg, MN. Kellogg is
known as home to LARK toys. A
destination toy shop with a full size, custom hand carved carrousel
inside. The animals are beautifully
carved and quite unique.
Monday, June 22nd
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| Dar (Donald's sister), Beth, Ted, Margaret and Donald Fischer We don't remember what was so funny... |
We woke to rain that showed no signs of stopping so we bagged the planned
ride and moved on to the Minneapolis/St Paul area. We had a great visit and dinner with Margaret
and Donald Fischer ( Heidi’s parents). We camped at a large county campground,
Baker Campgrounds about 15 miles west of Minneapolis - A very nice facility with over 200 camping
spots but relatively empty. In our
travels over the past 3 summers, the county campgrounds usually offer the best
facilities at the best rates in the area if you can find one
Tuesday, June 23
No rain, low humidity and temps in the high 70’s so a perfect day for a
ride. Our route took us from the
campground to Minnehaha Falls on a meandering tour. Minneapolis has an extensive network of
trails throughout the Twin Cities, so routing on bike trails and bike lanes was
not a problem…. Staying on the route was.
Ted uses a web based tool, RideWithGPS.com for generating our ride
routes and then downloads them to our Garmin bike GPS’s. Frequently the route directions are “continue
straight” where the trail is curving and splits into a “slight left” and a “slight
right”… so what is “straight”? So we
frequently felt like Fozzie the bear… “When you come to the fork in the road…
take it!”
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| At Minnehaha Falls |
With a few missed turns and backtracking we made it to the beautiful
falls and park. Total route – 65.5
miles… a metric century, 100km (>62 miles).
Wednesday, June 24
We spent another night in Baker Campground and took a 27 mile ride on
the back roads south of the park. Of
course there were many lakes along the way and a lot of really nice houses in
the area. After getting back to the RV,
showering, and dealing with RV logistics (dumping and taking on fresh water) we
headed NW toward our camp site for the night, Birch Lake Forest Campground. This is a primitive site, but gives us access
to the Woebegone Lake trail for a ride tomorrow before we move further north to
the Mississippi head waters region of Itasca Lake State Park.
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| Plenty of bike trails in the Minneapolis area (green lines), but they can be a bit confusing! |
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