Day 23: Leaving the Land of 11,842 Lakes (or Minnesota)

St Cloud, MN to St Croix Falls, WI, 88 miles, 1150 feet of climbing, the biggest at the very end of the ride.

We started off today by riding over a bridge in downtown St Cloud under which flowed the Mississippi River.  So we can say that today’s ride was the best ride we’ve taken east of the Mississippi so far - without question.   

Our route was pretty straight forward today, a straight shot across the eastern edge of central Minnesota, ending our stay in Minnesota at Taylor Falls. After a day of riding through flat and rolling farmlands, we were treated to a big descent to the “falls” along the St Croix River that separate MN from WI - or so we thought.  Taylor Falls MN and St Croix Falls WI share the same falls, so while we had a nice descent to the falls from the MN side, it meant we would also need to make an equally nice ascent on the WI side. And so it was, just as the temps for the day hit 95 degrees. A highlight of the day was Bill resting comfortably in Taylor Falls on a chair - see picture - that he has asked Susan to purchase for his den.

We had a pretty nice ride day, although the temps, sun and our perennial friend the wind zapped our energy levels a bit. We were quite pleased when we hit the air conditioned lobby of our hotel in St Croix Falls.  It was pretty obvious that it was a hot day outside and that we had just bicycled up the steepest incline around, so the hotel manager recommended that we jump right into the pool to cool off our cores - which turned out to be a great idea.

We saw enough farmland, grain elevators and associated structures to last us a long time, but we expect that we will be seeing a good deal more in the next few days. We are putting the final touches on a route plan across Wisconsin (“final touches” means that we have opened the map of WI and said, “we need to get over there”, and then closing the map), and plan on keeping well north of routes that might lead us through Milwaukee and/or Chicago. That will mean that we will need to find a way to bicycle across Lake Michigan. Fortunately, it looks like there is another way across. We’ll keep you posted.