It is hard to believe that this was our next to last day on our ride. We ate breakfast at 6:30 at the Devil’s Head Lodge (Picture 1) and were on the road a little after 7:00am. Ginni Hackney had a flat after 1.5 miles. (Picture 2) How many engineers does it take to change a tire? We rode 14 miles to get to the start of the ride in Sauk City. So while everyone else had a longer ride yesterday, we had it today. We crossed the river on a ferry (Picture 3) and got to Sauk City about 8:45am. We bought a bunch of banana’s and started off on the real course for today, and it started sprinkling. Several of us had checked the forecast and there was no rain in sight. It never really rained hard on us, but it had rained harder on some parts of the road we were riding, and we had to watch out for splash back from cars and other bikers. We had some surprise hills since we were on a route that none of us had been on before. In other areas it was very flat and we made very good time. We got to Spring Green and the Frank Lloyd Wright school where we had lunch prepared by Patti and Ruth. John Taska rode with us for much of the morning (see picture 4), and Patti Taska and Heidi joined us at lunch time. (picture 5)
Ingrid had a flat tire just as we started out after lunch. Picture 6 After lunch the cloud cover we had all morning disappeared and he temperature got markedly hotter. We figured we still had 30 miles to go to get to Richland Center. Luckily the rest of the route was very flat and we made good time. Part of the group went on an old railroad bed that has been covered with crushed limestone and packed to allow small tired bikes to be able to ride on it. We got some great pictures of some of the farms in the distance. (The other part of the group took the standard route. Luckily we all ended up at the same place – the White House Travelodge in Richland Center. After cleaning up we all went to eat at a nearby Mexican restaurant that was suggested by some locals. The food was great – some of the service was slow – but we had a good time. We have decided to eat breakfast here at 5:30am, leave at 6:00am and go to the end of the ride before we try to take showers. After we get cleaned up nd say our goodbyes, we will be driving back towards Colorado in a caravan. Nick and Martha will be heading to Annapolis, MD, and Herb and Ruth will be going back to Minneapolis, MN. We plan to overnight at a Day’s Inn near Council Bluffs IA tomorrow night, and then drive on into Boulder Sunday afternoon.
Tomorrow we will ride 64.7 miles from Richland Center to Prarie du Chien. The journal article tomorrow night may be very short. I hope you have enjoyed these capsules of our progress. There are many more pictures than I am able to send with these emails. If you are interested I could send you a CD to view the other pictures.
kws
