Day 25: 2000 Miles In

 

Chippewa Falls to Wausau, 105 miles, 3000 feet of climbing.

It was tough to decide which title to use for today’s blog entry. Each road that we cycled on today was abutted by Wisconsin dairy farms or farmland dedicated to feeding cows - although, in fairness, we talked to one farmer who migrated into the “cash crops” of soybeans and corn (for people). So we thought about entitling today’s blog “Dairyland” because everything about the area seemed to be about dairy farming.  Even the electric utility (which is a cooperative) is called Dairyland (and, coincidentally, we both had the good fortune to have worked with the team there on a few issues over the years). 

So, “Dairyland” pretty much encapsulated what we saw today. We talked to the former manager of a cheese coop yesterday (in Connorsville, while grabbing a burger at Jack’s Place) and passed buildings dedicated to cheese on our ride today. This makes us veritable “cheeseheads.” We also considered, even if just for a moment, putting down a deposit on a small, dilapidated but cute, dairy farm here so that we could share the whole experience with Susan and Ann. 

Of note, somewhere along the road during today’s ride, we passed the 2000 mile mark for our trip - which we thought was worthy of its own call out. Not bad for a couple of old guys. We’re happy with the progress, but realize that we have miles to go before we sleep - not really, more like finish.   

There were a lot of long rolling hills on today’s ride, so much so that it felt that we were either climbing or descending the entire day. In fact, we were. And we thought Wisconsin was flat. It isn’t! We really enjoyed the scenery - rolling green fields, lots of red barns, farmers haying, and novel farm equipment. But, to be honest, the hills and wind turned the latter part of the day into a real slog. We had modified our routing on the fly a few times during the day (mainly to avoid particularly long dirt or gravel roads), which wound up adding about 10+ miles to the trip - which didn’t help inspire us to climb the last dozen or so hills with a smile on our faces. But this happens on a trip like this. We’re glad that slogs have been the exception rather than the rule.

Tomorrow, we’re headed to Green Bay which we found out is connected to Wausau via a bike trail. Unfortunately, we also just found out that it’s surface is gravel, so we will pass on that this time - but maybe well be back with a gravel or mountain bike in tow. (But not too soon.) In the meantime, we’ll use our expert planning skills - open map, point, close map - to ensure we have the most efficient route possible for tomorrow’s ride.