Hibbing, Minnesota

Today was a rest day for us, and usually there isn't much to write about on a rest day.  Today was different.  One of our riders set up a tour of the town we are staying in - Hibbing Minnesota.  It was a short ride of 13 miles, but there is surprisingly a lot to see in this small town.  

Hibbing is the home town of Bob Dylan, Kevin McHale (a pro basketball player), and the Greyhound Bus Company.  There is also a huge iron ore mine here.  So - off 3 of us went.  The first thing we came to was the old railroad depot.  It has been turned into an Antique Store, which was closed, but outside we spent some time investigating a drill press that can be operated by a hand crank, or with a flat belt from some other power source.  An engineering marvel from the 1800's 

From there we rode to the Greyhound Bus Museum.  When we got to the door, there was a handwritten note on a piece of accounting paper which said "Volunteer went home sick, Sorry".  So we didn't get to go in, but we did learn about the history of the bus company from exhibits outside.  We also got this picture of an old time bus.

It turns out that the Museum is very close to the huge iron ore mine, so we rode over there.  The machines they use in the mine are unbelievably large as you can see in this picture comparing me and my bike to a dump truck.

The size of the mine itself is also hard to comprehend.

 Climbing on my bike up to the top where the displays were is not something I was able to do, but one of my fellow riders did get this picture of me rolling down the gravel drive from the mountain.

After that adventure, we were back in town, studying the city's displays honoring their favorite son, Bob Dylan.  Right outside his boyhood home, they have an interesting way to paint a crosswalk.

I'm not sure which of his songs the crosswalk displays.

At the high school there is a wall with one side commemorating his Nobel Prize.

And the other side having a permanent chair in front of a mosaic of his lyrics.  I am sitting in front trying to soak in all the wisdom.

By then it was time to get back to the hotel, go to dinner, and catch another sunset.

Not bad for a day off.

13 miles today

Grand Rapids to Hibbing

We had a relatively short ride today, almost all on trails, and there were lots of picture opportunities.  The forecast was for sunshine, but relatively cool weather, so we all put on sunscreen and wore our cool weather clothes.  Turned out the forecast wasn't completely correct, but we were able to adapt without problems.  Here is the start to our "sunny" day.

I suppose the sun was out above the fog, so maybe that counts.  The fog didn't last real long, and soon we were on our trail for the day.

This trail is privately managed, and they have a registration fee of  $10 per rider for a 3 day pass.  Well worth it in my opinion.  It appears to be a combination of old railroad beds & just trails laid down through the landscape.  From a bike riding perspective, the railroad beds are easier riding but typically not as scenic.  It is nice to get a five mile stretch of flat riding after struggling up hills for a while.  I only have two complaints about the trail maintenance considering they have my $10.

In fairness, I guess they can't be everywhere instantly, but we did have to walk around this tree that was obstructing the trail.  The other problem is something that we have experienced on and off the whole trip when we are on trails.  

In some areas, the trails have horizontal cracks that are jarring on the bike, although I have an easier time with my recumbent seat.  Our upright bike riders have a bigger problem.  This picture shows a single crack, but it isn't unusual to have as many as 15 or 20 cracks in a 200' stretch.  The  other problem is identified by the white circles painted on the pavement.  These are sometimes affectionately called "Launchers".  They protrude up through the pavement, and just plain need to be avoided.  The paint serves as a warning, but the preferred solution is to get rid of them.  I'm glad to say that more than 90% of the trails don't have either of these problems.

Now on to some of the more interesting features seen today.  I stopped to take a picture on a bridge and noticed that some ambitious spiders had built webs on the bridge itself.  I found this picture more interesting than the lake.

A little further down the trail, there was some evidence of logging activity.

And then I came around a corner and thought I saw snow on the ground

I knew that couldn't be correct, so I got off the bike and investigated.  The area looked as if it had maybe been logged in the last 10 -15 years.  Some young trees are starting to come back, and this is some kind of moss or something.  Here is a close up.

The next interesting sight was a floating bridge.  I'm sure it is cheaper than something more permanent, and since the transition point to the trail can vary depending on the water level, the sign was appropriate

I did walk my bike across as suggested, but someone not in our group chose to ignore the advice.

When we were obviously back on the rail bed portion of the trail, we also traveled through a few small towns.  The other day, I put up a picture of a colorful tire fence.  Well there must be a lot of extra tires up here, because here is one I found that has a bunch more tires, might actually serve as a fence of some sort, but isn't nearly as colorful.

Another thing I haven't noticed before on the rail bed trails is shown below.

Chin Link fencing on both sides of the trail.  This is an area where the trail was at least 20' above the surrounding landscape, so the only thing I can imagine is that they are trying to keep bicycles, and maybe snowmobiles from falling off and down the embankment.  Seems like an expensive deterrent to me.

I don't have any sunsets or rainbows today, but here is the most picturesque scene available.

41 miles today.

Next up is our final day off before we finish next Saturday.

Walker to Grand Rapids

Today's ride took me back to 2019 when I did the Coast to Coast ride from San Diego to St Augustine.  At times it felt like Deja Vu, and brought back lots of memories.  Here's why - 

1.  We were 95% of the day on roads (nicely paved with good shoulders)

2.  We rode for about 60 miles, which is more than the average for this ride, but just about the average for the Coast to Coast.

3.  There was a lot of up and down hills. (mostly not too steep, but I am more tired tonight than any day on this trip yet.

4.  It rained on and off most of the afternoon (we had a lot of bad weather on the Coast to Coast in 2019)

The day can be pretty much summed up with these three pictures:

These three roads pretty much took us the whole way.  One of the nice features of both this trip, and the Coast to Coast is getting rest stops along the way.  The wife of one of our riders drives a van, which also hauls our clothes and gear so we don't have to carry that on our bikes.  She also positions herself about every 20 miles so we can stop and refill water, get a snack and just check in with each other.  Here is what such a rest stop looks like.

We are just getting ready to pull out after our break.  You will notice that I have my yellow rain jacket on, which means this was in the afternoon.  The forecast was for "sprinkles", but when we came outside after lunch at a local cafe, it was raining, not sprinkling.  We waited for about 10 minutes, and the rain stopped, but still looked threatening, so on went the rain gear.  For the rest of the afternoon it alternated between steady rain, and other times the road was dry meaning it had not rained at all there.  Most important I was warm.

Here is a picture someone got of me from behind.  You can see the storm clouds building.

One of our riders is intrigued with how I start out from a stop on my Cruzbike.  My approach is what is called the "Fred Flintstone".  I stand up and push off to get the bike rolling a bit, then just slide down into the seat and raise my feet up to the pedals.  I find it very effective.  He says that from behind it looks like I am getting ready to launch like an airplane.  He tried to get a picture of it for the last few days, but wasn't happy with the results, so this morning we did a posed take off, and got this interesting shot.  I told him we just need to get the tires off the ground!

Our nightly ritual is dinner at a local restaurant, and here is a picture of our current group from tonight.

I've posted a number of sunset photos from other days, but tonight we had something different to see in the sky.

Tomorrow we are back on a trail for most of the day, and the weather is promising sunshine, but cool.  We are all ready for that.

62 miles today.

Bemidgi to Walker

Before we left Bemidgi this morning, we back tracked a couple of miles to see their version of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.  We were going to do that yesterday as we came into town, but decided against it because of the rain.  Here is what we saw.

I personally liked better the other likenesses we saw as we were riding north, but now I know.  There was also a statue of a Native American in the same park as Paul.  This statue was made out of iron & is bigger than life size.

Then we started our trip to the next trail.  That means much of the day we were on country roads.  They were well paved with wide shoulders and a rumble strip to alert any drivers who may accidentally drift.  I felt very safe.  A lot of the roads we have been on carry this designation.

We are close to the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and it is a tourist attraction for many.  We probably crossed the Mississippi 5 or 6 times today.  In this territory the river does not run straight south as we are accustomed to thinking about it.  It runs north out of Lake Itasca, then west, then south, then east etc before it makes the big turn south towards New Orleans.  It is also much smaller as you can see in this picture.

I do understand why Minnesota is called the land of 10,000 lakes.  Here is another perspective on that with a little different look than some pictures I have posted before.

 There is another piece of the landscape that I have seen other places before, but today for the first time on this trip.  A large swampy area with thousands of dead trees.  They aren't really large trees, but big enough to have grown for 10 - 30 years I would guess.  Makes me wonder what caused all of them to die.

One human interest picture today from the road.  I choose to call it the tire fence, but the tires are spaced out so far they won't hold anything in, and they are sunk in the ground about 1/2 their diameter, but the thing that made it picture worthy is that every other tire is painted either purple or blue.  Why?  I have no idea.

After about 25 miles on the roads, we did come to a trail that took us to our overnight stop in Walker.  Tomorrow we have a full day of roads before we come to the next big trail adventure.

48 miles today.

Hackensack to Bemidgi

Another full day on the Paul Bunyan Trail, but of course there is always something different to make things interesting.  The weather forecast was for good conditions until 3 PM, so we planned our departure time so we qould arrive at 2 PM, just in case the forecast was off.  That didn't do any good, because it started raining about 1:30 PM!  Fortunately I had packed my rain gear, and that prevented me from getting very wet, and the temperature was in the mid 60's so I didn't get cold.

Most of the trail today was very much like what we experienced yesterday, except there weren't any small towns with interesting things to take pictures of.  The pictures I have posted on previous days pretty much cover what we saw today, with just a few exceptions.  I've talked about bike trails that are created from former railroad beds, and much of what we rode today was that.

Fortunately, our volunteer coordinator and route planner is always looking for interesting options, and today there was an opportunity to take an alternate trail route.  I knew it would be interesting because at the start of the alternate route there was a sign which said something like "Notice: The next 8.5 miles could be a challenge for some riders".  I count myself as part of that group.

The terrain was winding and hilly.  I certainly worked harder on that section than any other part of this trip so far.  It is interesting to me that they don't have a sign to tell you when there is a long uphill grade coming, but if it is a downhill, this is what you see:

There was also one flower blooming, which I found picture worthy (and it also gave me an opportunity to catch my breath for a bit.)

We did have an interesting lunch experience.  Stopped at about the only place open in the little town of LaPorte, and arrived just about the same time as a group of about 20 Red Hat Ladies.  There was one bartender, who also was the waiter, and as far as we could tell, one cook.  They were doing the best they could, and we are a pretty laid back group, so we just waited them out.  Had to do some extra stretching before finishing the last 20 miles after a longer than expected lunch break. 

We have now reached our furthest North location.  Starting tomorrow we will be heading mostly East until we reach Lake Superior in Duluth.

Thanks to Nettie for tonight's sunset picture

57 miles today

Baxter to Hackensack

 If you've been following my blog, you may have noticed that there was no post yesterday.  That is because we had a day off riding.  As much fun as this is, it is still nice to have a day where you don't have to get everything ready & ride.  In this case, it was also nice because it rained, which would have been unkind for riding.  It did clear toward evening, which means there is a picture to post.  When I first saw it, I thought it was a wildfire, but it is actually the sunset.  Thanks to Jim A for this picture.

We had two unpleasant surprises as we were getting ready to start out today.  First, one of our riders had not been feeling 100%, and this morning he tested positive for Covid.  He has a daughter who lives in Minneapolis, and she came to pick him up.  If he is able to get a negative Covid test in the next week, we will welcome him back.  

Second, as I was getting ready to check the tire pressure on my bike, I noticed that the rear tire was completely flat!  With all of the experienced bikers here, it didn't take long to replace the tube, but it is a mystery to me how it was fine when we arrived the other day, the bike sat for a full day, and now it was flat.  Here we are working on the repair.

Notice in the picture how everyone is dressed with extra layers.  It was about 40 degrees when we left this morning, but the sun was shining, and it warmed up nicely during the day.  This was an interesting day of riding because we were 99% of the day on the Paul Bunyan Trail.  The first stretch out of Baxter took us deep into the woods, and had some beautiful scenery.  Here is a picture where the clouds show a mirror image in the lake below.  Thanks again Jim A.

We then got into an area where there were a number of small towns along the way.  Paul Bunyan is a big deal around here, and each town seems to have its own way to celebrate his popularity. Pequot Lakes has Babe the Blue Ox.  Here I am with Babe in my color coordinated gear for the day.

Hackensack has Paul's wife Lucette.

There are also a number of old train stations along the way, some of which have also turned into museums. 

The further north we got, the more the trail ran alongside a highway, which gave opportunities for a few more pictures.  Notice the horses made out of old fuel oil tanks.

Tonight we are staying at a resort just outside of Hackensack.  Our leader could not find a hotel for us, and he convinced the resort folks to rent to us for just one night.  They usually have a one week minimum stay, so we are grateful they are allowing us to stay.  It also means that there isn't a restaurant close by, but because the cabin has a fully equipped kitchen, we were able to make our own meal.  Kind of a nice break from the standard schedule.  My contribution was to wash the pots and pans, which is about all I am qualified to do when it comes to food service.

One feature of the cabin we are staying in is the absolutely largest bathroom I have ever seen.  It could be a bedroom.  Someone commented that they maybe just haven't installed the hot tub yet.

The resort is on a lake, and I am going to finish my post with a more traditional sunset than the wildfire look I started out with.

51.5 miles today.  More trails tomorrow.

Little Falls to Baxter

 We started out today with cooler temperatures & the threat of rain.  That caused me to wear full length leggings, a sweatshirt under my long sleeve jersey, and full fingered riding gloves.  I also packed in some rain gear.  Sure enough, after about 5 miles it started to rain slightly, so I put on my rain coat.  Again that had the effect of causing the rain to stop.

Our first 25 miles today were on roads, headed to our next trail.  The roads were good, and lightly traveled, so it was an easy ride even with a little rain.

Part of my theme from yesterday had to do with the railroad, and today that theme continues, but in a totally different way.  The first thing that happened was we came to a bridge that carries cars, and also has a railroad track running down the middle of it.  I've never seen that before.  We couldn't tell if it is actually still used for trains, but it appears to be in good enough condition.

Railroad tracks are a true hazard for bicycles.  The worst are tracks that cross a road in anything other than 90 degrees perpendicular to the road.  It is so easy for the bike tires to get caught up in the tracks, and before you can even think about it you're down.  This track which ran over the dual purpose bridge then started to curve away from the road.  One of our riders wasn't sure to have his bike cross true perpendicular & went down hard.

I was a few hundred yards behind him, and didn't actually see him go down, but he was flat on the ground when I came up to him.  Fortunately he was not injured badly, and after about 10 minutes of recovery was able to get back up on the bike, and rode the rest of the way.  Here is what that curve looks like.  This picture was taken as we were heading out.

A little further on, we got on the Great River Road.  Here's a picture of a few of us riding that stretch with me out in front.

Our next stop was at a rest area which was the start of a large park & the Paul Bunyan Trail that would take us into Baxter.  Of course I had to get a picture with the namesake.

Just minutes after our arrival, some real rain started to come down.  The radar showed it would last about 30 minutes, so we took advantage of some rest time in the visitor's center.  After some rest and refreshments, we headed out for the final leg.  This trail was a real treat. Nicely paved, gentle curves, reasonably flat.

At one point the trail is diverted onto a road with a bridge crossing the Mississippi River.  This far north, the river is not as mighty, but still certainly navigable.  When we stopped there were a few kayakers coming down.

I recruited a fellow rider to get a picture of me as I rode past the trail sign.

 We had no further weather to challenge us on the way into Baxter, but we did put on some extra miles trying to find our way through town.  There were no less than 4 either mistaken turns, or missed turns.  Three different riders, including the leader who set up the route in the first place took turns leading the way, and then giving up.  I am unqualified to offer any assistance, so I just rode the extra distance.

This is a great group, with no one belly aching about such a situation, and in the end we made it through just fine.  The hotel wasn't fully ready for us anyway.  We normally enjoy a nightly dinner together, and tonight was no different.

Tomorrow is a rest day, followed by a couple of days of almost exclusively trail riding.

40 miles today.