Day 40: Back in the saddle again…

After a fantastic week of rest (I didn’t intend to rest for that long but fell victim to- or proved- Newton’s 1st law of motion. You know, an object at rest tends to stay at rest…) and relaxation with our good friends Mike & Mia Swindoll, I headed out this morning for Milaca, MN. In retrospect, one week may have been too long- I went from ride hardened and tired to sort of soft and lazy- in one week. It was worth it though- it was a great week! I rode generally southeast around many pretty lakes and then spent a while riding around Mille Lacs, one of the largest of the thousands and thousands and thousands (etc.) of lakes in Minnesota. Not too long after I started, a man drove slowly by me and yelled “where are you going?” I yelled back “Connecticut!” About 2 miles later, he pulled over and flagged me down. He apologized for stopping me but said he wanted to talk about how in the world I could ride a bike that far. We talked for about 20 or 30 minutes and then I continued on my way. This often happens in restaurants,  convenience stores and rest stops- but not so often on the road like this- I do enjoy talking with people and encouragimg them to do something like this if it intrigues them. Anyway,  the roads today were  occasionally hilly, with nice shoulders and scenery and light traffic. The wind was moderately strong and mainly a crosswind but sometimes a quartering headwind as well (sigh). All in all, a very pleasant start for the second half of the trip. Daily mileage: 75, trip miles: 1,990.

Our good friends Mike & Mia. We had so many great meals, local beers and many fun games of crokinole and kubb (google it):

This is me and my most excellent support team:

A really cool fungus by Mike & Mia’s house:

The first photo is a typical county road and the second is the road around Mille Lac:

Mille Lac- it is a big lake and you can’t see across it:

The Rum River flows out of Mille Lac. The first photo is right at the lake, the second is the 6th time I crossed it and is about 20 miles downstream- where it is quite a bit bigger. It is one of the prettier rivers around these parts: 

This is the headwater of the mighty Mississippi River where it flows out of Lake Itasca- it is about 8-10 ft wide here. I took this photo a couple of days ago but am showing it now so we can compare it to the river when I cross it several times further downstream. The Mississippi River drops about 1,400 ft in the 2,318 miles it flows to the Gulf of Mexico and half of that drop is in Minnesota.