Thursday, June 23rd
I had a lazy start and left the Bujold household at around 11 in the morning. I’d got sucked into a spiral of YouTube videos at 1am and couldn’t roll myself out of bed until about 9. The bad weather had passed and it was hot again. Outside the garage I reattached my GoPro after the bracket thing holding it to the handlebar broke a few days before. I’d ordered some parts to the house and now fixed it on to the fork on the left hand side. It was more discreet this way, and might get be steadier than the handlebars, though I was unsure if the tyre would be in the frame now it was lower. I’d shoot some test footage and check at the end of the day.
I followed a cycle path back into Grand Rapids past mounds of red dirt which were excavated during mining for iron ore in the area. It gave the area a slightly Mars-like look. As usual the first ten miles leaving the comfort of a home behind were tough and I felt lazy.
I was aiming to get close to Bermiji, probably the next largest town as you head West, about 80 miles away.
It was a good day of cycling. Not a Strong wind, and the roads I followed were mainly very quiet once I’d escaped Grand Rapids. Logging trucks and people towing boats were the things to look out for, but these big country roads had a wide shoulder and it was easy to ignore the traffic when it did come to pass.
Small towns were few and far between, as were services of any kind. I could carry around 5 litres of water, and tried to keep these all strategically topped up whenever I could.
In the early afternoon I reached the oddly named town of Ball Club. Another tiny nothing place. One shop which looked like a general store from the 40s with wooden shelves and a worn out counter. I bought an ice cream sandwich and found a park with some baseball faded red bleachers in the overgrown grass.
I made a cup of coffee on the steps in the shade and waited out an hour or so. I wasn’t in a rush. I was approaching the Chippewa National Forest where I planned to camp somewhere. I’d heard it was free and legal to camp anywhere in these, provided you didn’t leave a trace and respected the place. I aimed for a section of the forest near Cass lake.
I crossed the Mississippi multiple times during the day. It was always signposted and made a good place to stop and pause for a minute or two.
The last few hours of the aternoon were spent mainly on the Route 2. One of the busier roads which headed directly West. There were hundreds of lakes in the area, Cass Lake was one of the bigger, developed ones with resorts around parts of the edge, and the state park.
I took a smaller road off the 2, then a dirt track which headed into the forest and hypothetically down to the shore. It was covered in sand and my tyres sunk in a bit too much at one point and the bike fell to the side. Then I found myself at a dead end, a gate which was locked, campsites down roads on the other side but just out of reach.
I took off the panniers on the bike so I could hoist it over the low gate and noticed one of the shims which held the pannier clips snug to the rack was missing. These clip in firmly so I’m not sure how it could have come off whilst I was cycling. I thought it could have come detached when I had a spill on the sandy road earlier, so I looped back around, an extra four or five miles to the spot i’d come off. It wasn’t there. I headed back into the forest again. It would be fixable.
There were campsites in the forest that you had to pay for – $23 and $25 each. I wasn’t going to pay that. Instead I headed down to Norway Beach recreation area. A section of the forest with a pier for launching kayaks and an area for picnicking.
There was one person out on the lake in a kayak, it was around half an hour to sunset and I quickly forgot about the problems I had with the pannier.
I found a spot in the woods, right by the shoreline and the picnic area. No one was in that particular area and as far as I knew it was perfectly fine to camp there, so I set my tent up overlooking the water. The most scenic camp spot id had in some time, a view right out over the flat water and the tree lined shoreline which curved around to the East.
I dug out a strip of rubber from a zip lock bag of bits and pieces i’d kept because I thought they might be useful. I taped a section to the rack and the pannier clipped back on with a snug and satisfying click. Fixed!
I hung my food bag in a tree away from the tent once I’d cooked dinner. The chance of bears here was extremely slim, but it was good preparation now I was getting further West.
I was enjoying Minnesota a lot, and decided to pace myself out to Fargo. I’d get there the day after tomorrow. North Dakota, if it lived up to the image in my mind that everyone had given me, would be a barren, potentially very boring place. I could save my energy, the 100 mile days, and the head-down cycling for then.
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