Monday, June 20th
Aside from waking up in the dome house it was an uneventful and straightforward day – literally. Many of the highways and county roads I’m on are very straight. It’s just a case keep your bike steady in the wind and continuing to move forward bit by bit. Minnesota is a lot prettier than Illinois and Ohio. More trees and many small lakes. The air feels fresher here, despite the temperatures which have been consistently over 30°.
I left the house at about 8. The host, Tom, was a low key kind of guy, we chatted briefly about the house and how he constructed it, but otherwise he kept to himself paying scrabble on his laptop, so I didn’t hang around too long. I wasn’t expecting much since i’d given him literally an hours notice the night before.
The Adventure Cycling route isn’t always the most efficient route, but it’s avoided any gravel roads and like the kind Google seems to have sent me down a lot. It also favours small country roads over larger roads that most traffic takes meaning it’s very peaceful cycling but services can be up to twenty miles away.
For the morning it was on the route 9 heading north. At the town of Sunrise (‘hometown of Hollywood legend Richard widmark’) I veered west and stopped at the town of Harris for some late breakfast / lunch. It was a tiny place but a cafe on the side of the road – Kaffe Stuga.
It was another place of Swedish descent. I sat in a booth in the corner and had three cups of coffee, fried sunfish and chips, and a slice of raspberry pie for desert, with more coffee.
The interior was clad with wood and photos of the local school class from as far back as the 30s hung on the wall along with other mementos and Swedish artefacts like the Dala horse again, and the flag. It reminded me of a cafe I’d actually been to in Stockholm. It still seemed slightly surreal to me to find all these references to a place I’ve spent a lot of time, but in a microscopic place practically in the middle of nowhere.
I continued west a little further, past a series of small lakes, to a juncture in the Adventure Cycling route. There were two options, a lower, more westerly (and presumably faster) rout which headed straight to Fargo or a route which went north to Grand Rapids before heading west, eventually to Fargo too.
I’d shown the two options to James, my host in Minneapolis and decided I’d take the longer way around. His parents lived in Grand Rapids so could give me a place to stay, and the route looked a lot more scenic. Lakes and forests all over the place.
So I took that route. It was 25 miles on highway 47 to Milles Lac Lake, there was a state park on the lake where I could camp. It had been a long 70 miles. The wind was getting to me, but after a short break for ice cream at Ogilvie I felt invigorated again to complete this last section. The wind seems to be dying down too. It felt like the best cycling to be had was early in the morning, and the last few hours before sunset. But it was my style to just keep on cycling all day until it was time to stop and find somewhere to sleep. I’d heard of some people getting all the cycling down before 1pm. Perhaps I could try that one day. It had been a while since I was up earlier enough.
I reached the park at around 8. It was in the town of Isle. A small lakeside place with a supermarket and the usual collection of cafes and hardware shops found in towns of similar dimensions and tone.
The park office was closed, I went down to the riverside campground, then back up to the office. You were meant to put your money for the camp spot in an envelope in a box there. But since it was quiet, and I didn’t have the money on me, I chanced spending the night for free. I could pay in the morning if I had too.
I picked a spot close to the water and cooked my dinner, a Can of chilli, tortilla wraps and avacao, just as it was getting dark.
I watched the sunset over the lake, by the waters edge. This was followed by a full moon which reflected down on the water right up to the edge of the jetty. The air was thick with swarming insects.
Map
