Sturgeon Lake to North Branch

Our extremely budget motel last night didn't have internet, or breakfast included, so some of us pedaled the first 8 miles, and then stopped at a diner for breakfast.  Others had a bagel and started riding, not stopping until lunch.  I had breakfast.  We were back on the Munger Trail today for the first 25 miles, and it was mostly rail bed, with a few areas of up and down and curvy trail just to keep us alert.

Most of the scenery is similar to what we have seen, but there was one open area that might have been logged 30 years ago or so, and now a pine forest is starting to grow up.  It doesn't look like a plantation because the trees are not in rows.  They are really randomly growing in this 80 acre or so area.  The thing that makes this a nice picture in my opinion is that the background shows some nice hardwood with colors changing.

Once the Munger trail ended we were back on the highway, traveling through small towns.  The road was mostly good, with nice wide shoulders.

You will notice it says "Old Hy 61".  This road runs pretty much parallel to a new interstate, which also means it is not heavily traveled.  Nice for biking.  

We usually spread out while riding because people ride at different speeds, and some stop more often for picture taking etc.  But we normally all stop for lunch at the same place.  It is sometimes an adventure for a small town cafe to handle an influx of 10 bikers, each wanting to pay individually.  Here 3 of us are in line waiting to check out and get back on the road.

Today we are back to a couple of features that I remember from earlier in our journey - corn fields & murals on buildings.  No corn field pictures, but here are 3 murals I saw.

A couple of other interesting things today was a huge statue of a Native American.  

I looked for a story to go with the statue, but couldn't find anything.

There was also a fully restored red caboose that I found picture worthy.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast is for heavy storms over night, and possibly extending into tomorrow.  We have one last day of riding scheduled, but we all agreed to wait until morning before deciding what to do.

65 miles today.

Duluth to Sturgeon Lake

 Sorry this post is late - we had no internet connectivity last night.

We started out the day climbing away from Lake Superior heading south.  I am pleased to report that although the climb was steady for the first 10 miles, it was not steep, so I was able to do it with no problems.  Soon after we got out of the city of Duluth we came to the:

This would be our path for most of today and half of tomorrow.  It was one of the nicer trails we have been on, except for the place where the sign said Trail Closed.  We decided to see exactly what that meant.

Not Good!  Some of our group decided to look for an alternative route, others decided to portage the mess.  I had not done a portage since my canoeing days, so I joined that group.  Turns out that a nice detour was marked which means we could have avoided the portage.

Once we got going again on the trail, we saw some new things we haven't experienced on other trails we have ridden so far.  Most of this trail again was old railroad bed, but the significant difference today was that they had to blast through rock in order to get the rails down.  That made for some pretty rock outcroppings.  The other interesting thing I noticed was that in a couple of areas where the rock walls were high above us on both sides, for some reason they painted stripes on both sides of the trail.

I don't know why.  It seems to me that if you get off the trail in an area like this, you might hit the wall, which would not be good, but I think it makes more sense to put stripes on an area of trail where there is a 20' drop off.  That would be even worse.  In any event, that isn't what was done.

The trail ran past a couple of towns, and we took the occasion to stop at a place called TJ's.  I thought of my grandson TJ, but I don't think the place is named after him.  Here is a nice picture of my fellow rider Keith sitting on a live edge bench next to a wooden cut out of the TJ character. 

There were a couple of other interesting features at TJ's, including a train carved out of a single log, huge pumpkins, and an old car with a leaky radiator doubling as a waterfall.

Something I noticed today, that I don't remember seeing before was multiple caterpillars making their way across the trail in front of us.  I am happy to say I didn't ride over any of them, but after seeing 4 or 5 today, I decided to get a picture.

The most interesting thing to me about this is that all of them were going from the east side of the trail to the west.  Why?

I've also talked some in previous posts about bad areas of trail where something is causing the pavement to protrude.  We always are on the watch for this because otherwise it can be a jarring experience.  Today I noticed in some areas it looks like they brought out a grinding machine trying to flatten out these "launchers"

We appreciated their efforts.  Not far before the end of our ride today, we crossed a bridge over a river and got some nice pictures of these rapids.

Overall a pretty nice day on the bike.

48 miles today.