In 2005, after Steve and I had ridden SAGBRAW in the summer, my friends, Eric, Dave, and Jim, and I decided we wanted to ride Wisconsin once again. I promise, this is the last Wisconsin ride about which I will write, as I have already written four pieces about Wisconsin rides. All of the rides have, however, covered different parts of Wisconsin. This would be across the mid-section of the state.
Eric and I met Dave at the house of one of his many friends about 15 miles north of Harmony, MN and rode to Harmony, where we were to meet Jim, in cool but pleasant autumn weather under a clear blue sky. It was cool enough that we had to wear jackets but not so cool that we were uncomfortable. We met Jim in Harmony and headed for Wisconsin. We stopped for the night, after a short day’s ride of 35-miles, in Lanesboro, MN—a very nice, picturesque village in southern Minnesota. This had a bit of special meaning for me as I had spent my high school years in Spring Valley, MN and played baseball, football, basketball, and track against Lanesboro. In fact, Eric had been raised in Leroy-Ostrander, MN, which is also in Spring Valley’s conference, and we figured years later that, being the same age, we must have played football against each other.
We spent the evening in the Stone Mill Suites, a really nice little hotel in Lanesboro, whose owners, Rick and Sheryl Lehman, kindly allowed us to “crash” in the basement, as all the rooms were taken. If you have been reading my posts, first off, thank you. But second, you know how adept we are at finding nice little hotels in picturesque little towns. If you ever get a chance to visit Lanesboro and that corner of the state, do it! You won’t be disappointed, it is a beautiful part of the state. And while you’re there stay an evening at The Stone Mill Inn, you’ll enjoy it. There are also two bike trails in the immediate area—The Root River and the Preston to Harmony Valley State Trails.
On day two we rode the rest of the Root River to Houston, then picked up roads to LaCrosse, WI, where we spent the night.
The next morning we started out on the La Crosse River Trail, thinking it would be nice to have a trail, but were disappointed when we found the trail to be dirt with ruts and holes on it. It wasn’t a really pleasant ride, made even less so by the fact that Jim’s bags kept falling off the panniers. We finally got that problem taken care of using several plastic zip-ties. As far as I know those bags are still on Jim’s panniers because we tied them on so well that they may never come off again. The Sparta-Elroy Trail is known for its tunnels, one of which is a quarter-mile long, and riding through them can be somewhat daunting as you go from bright daylight to almost complete darkness in a matter of seconds. We rode partially through the longest tunnel but then thought it prudent to walk the bikes the rest of the way as we really could not see where we were riding.
We rode through two more, shorter, tunnels that day and ended the day in the small town of Wilton, staying the night at a small motel called, appropriately, The Trailside Inn.
Day four found us again riding a bike trail, this time The Four Hundred Trail—so named for the four hundred minutes the train that formerly traveled this segment took to complete the route from Minneapolis to Chicago. The 400 is a nice trail with occasional rock outcroppings lending variety to the scenery of farms, woods, and small towns.
We retraced our tracks to Lanesboro where we spent another night and had our celebratory dinner at the Stone Mill Inn. It had been another nice autumn ride but the good times had been interspersed with some problems. We had had three flat tires, rode through tough construction areas, and had had several mishaps. We had been able to overcome them all, however, and the difficulties just made the accomplishment all the better.
