We tried to get an early start this morning, but its so hard to get up early some mornings. Even with eating breakfast at the hotel, we didn't get out of town until 9:15 or so.
We had a 95+ mile ride ahead of us today with 18 mph cross/headwinds from the South. Luckily the ride into Rochester was mostly downhill and we were able to cruise along into the city within an hour. After hitting the Aldi Store for some cheap snacks, we were off for Winona. The ride to Winona was a long 40 miles from Rochester with terrible bumpy shoulders. The roads in Minnesota have been the worst that we've encountered so far. It seems like they do upkeep on the road but the shoulders are awful!
We arrived in Winona around 3:30 PM and rode around town a bit to take a few photos. Winona is a beautiful historic town on the Mississippi River. It was almost 4:30 by the time we left town and we still had 35 miles or so to ride. I was getting antsy to ride and thus was really agravatted when Marc got a flat tire right outside of Winona. It seems like he is getting a lot of flats lately.
After leaving Winona, we were looking to pick up the Great River State Trail that would take us down to La Crosse, WI. We were suppossed to be able to pick up the trail just miles after crossing the Mississippi River. Well we rode on for 10 miles and could not find the trail. Finally we hit the trail about 15 miles down from Winona. It was a dirt two track trail and not the paved trail that we were expecting, oh well. We were lucky to find the trail all together. About a 1/2 mile into the trail, I heard Marc talking to someone so I turned around and circled back to where he had stopped. He had run into two younger guys that were riding cross country from East to West.
We stopped to chat with these guys for a while. They recommended that we take the Elroy-Sparta Trail down to Madison, WI. Its a partially paved bike trail that runs about 130 miles from La Crosse to Madison.
We swapped stories and routes for a few minutes. These guys were traveling about 50 miles per day. They were really shocked to hear that we were riding 80 miles/average per day. (Now I'm wondering if we are trying to do too much!) They were camping every night and eating rice and beans for dinner every night. Ugh - that sounds terrible. I was glad that we saved enough money to stay in motels and eat out.
It was 6:30 by the time I pulled chatty Marc away from these guys and we were on our way again. The route along the trail was fast with a tree lined path running along side of the Mississippi River. It was beautiful.
At mile 95 or so, we arrived back into civilization. I pointed out a few motels to Marc but he wanted to ride by them as they had no restaurants nearby. So we rode on, tired, grumpy and hungry. It was 8 PM by now and we had last eaten at noon. We finally found a motel downtown La Crosse and arrived at exactly mile 100. Wow, it was a long day - almost 11 hours on the road. I'm surprised that I'm still up. Marc went to bed about 45 minutes ago. I must be getting used to all this exercise or something!
Tomorrow we are going to try to find the Elroy Sparta Trail to Reedsburg - about 82 miles.
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