Thursday I head for Cortland, N.Y., where the Bon Ton Roulet begins Sunday and ends July 28.
I hope that in the future, I will be able to blog while on multi-day bicycle tours. This time, however, I won’t have that capability.
I’ll post photos and observations when I get back and hope to write a feature for the Tribune.
I hope everyone enjoys the rest of July and has some of their own memorable bike rides.
A few days after I posted a story of mine about the Glacial Lakes Trail, I ended up in a conversation with some old friends who I have known since high school.
High school, in my case, was a long time ago and we’ve all gone off and done different things, married, moved to different parts of the country and see each other very infrequently.
But one of us, who lives about the farthest from Willmar was in town over for the weekend so we got together.
A couple people in the group knew about my interest in bikes and asked a few questions:
How much do I ride?
Did I ride to the get together at a home on one of the area’s lakes?
What prompted me to start riding?
Opinions vary greatly about state-funded trails like Glacial Lakes.
Somehow the conversation drifted to trails and the range of opinions on the topic surprised me.
Trails are OK, one friend said, but it should be recognized that they’re used for recreation, not transportation and funded by some agency other than the state transportation department.
Too few people use them, said another member of the group. No more should be built and no more tax dollars should be put into those that already exist.
But more people are biking for transportation than ever, said the out of towner, who is an avid cyclist. One of his sons, for example, lives in a large city and his two modes of transportation are mass transit and his bike.
It was kind of hard for me to offer much of an opinion because my feelings about trails are kind of mixed.
I’d like to be able to pedal down a trail from Willmar all the way to St. Cloud, but I’d only make that ride a few times a year.
Right now I’m preparing for the Bon Ton Roulet, a week-long ride around New York’s Finger Lakes which will involve some serious climbing.
I need to spend as much time as I can riding the hilliest territory I can find. While on one of my longer rides a few months ago, I met a man in Paynesville who used to live near the Finger Lakes. He’s a cyclist too and described some of the riding in that portion of New York as 45 minutes up and 10 minutes down.
Most trails around here, and in much of the country, are built on old railroad routes and are as flat as possible.
I still ride Glacial Lakes regularly, but use it as a quick route home or a stretch of flat pavement on which to cool down after a long ride.
On recent trips to St. Cloud, I’ve seen a biker-hiker bridge being built where a railroad bridge once stood near Richmond. There’s trail in the vicinity of the bridge, but that’s miles from Paynesville, which is about as far as you can get riding Glacial Lakes.
But I’ve heard fro
m people who probably know that state trail money will be targeting paths that move bikers and hikers within communities, not between them.
If that’s true, it’s better than nothing and probably better serving the majority of people who use trails.
And, if it isn’t extended, maybe part of Glacial Lakes can be fixed.
The older portion of the trail, from Willmar to New London, is filled with patched cracks and potholes and is in need of repair. That’s the stretch of the trail that gets the most use.
Far fewer riders use the more recently paved portion of the trail from New London to Hawick and beyond. Much of that stretch, unfortunately, runs right along Highway 23 for any motorist who notices the trail to see that it’s often empty.
And the impression given by such light use is one of the reasons why some people want to pull state money from all trails.
Mother Nature seems to be watching Minnesota and the Midwest in general, to make sure the weather sucks on holidays and weekends.
Bored with showers and thunderstorms, the old woman recently switched to a heat wave to add a little misery to anyone in the area attempting to enjoy the outdoors over the Fourth of July.
Did I mention the mosquitos?
I’ve resorted to getting up with the sun to get an hour or two of riding in before the serious heat and humidity set in.
That was kind of tough this morning because I worked until 11:30 last night.
But I did it.
It was cooler – not really comfortable – but cooler.
Since Mother has to exact some sort of penalty for any meteorological concession she makes, there was a north wind slowing me down as I pedaled out of town. It wasn’t terrible. It was just about 10 mph – enough to let me know that I wasn’t struggling enough with a relative humidity of 94 percent.
It’s that humidity that really got to me, but not so much because of my discomfort. The head wind cooled me rather nicely, thank you very much.
This soft focus wasn’t what I was striving for.
When I stopped to take a photo to document my early morning adventure, the humidity kept accumulating on my camera lens. Wiping the lens with my jersey seemed to help, but even pictures that looked good on my camera’s little screen turned out to be foggy.
Soft focus photos work sometimes.
But all I wanted to show was my bike parked in front of a corn field with the sun rising through the clouds above. I’m not sure the fuzziness I captured really enhanced what I shot.
It should be a little cooler tomorrow, according to the National Weather Service.
Humidity, however, will probably come in the form of the 60 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms.
The old railroad bridge on Nest Lake, near Spicer is probably one of the most picturesque areas on the Glacial Lakes State Park.
I’ve spent what most people would consider way too much time riding my bike on the Glacial Lakes State Trail.
For me, the trail is like a small interstate through the heart of Kandiyohi County’s lake country from Willmar in west central Minnesota to the Stearns County line past Hawick.
That’s 22 miles, but I’ve used Glacial Lakes as the anchor of rides ranging from 50 to 100 miles long.
Built on an old railroad grade, the trail offers an all-paved, mostly flat route through the county’s wetlands, lakes and fields. Much of the trail is open allowing a panoramic view of the country formed 10,000 years ago by glaciers.
Those are the areas where I’ve seen wild turkey, deer, eagles, pheasants and, very recently, a wild canine that may have been a coyote or a wolf.
Other stretches of the trail are lined with trees that, during the summer, create a canopy of leaves offering cool shade from a hot sun.
While I like to bike Glacial Lakes, I see people hiking, in-line skating or riding horseback.
I compared the trail earlier to an interstate and, like that type of thoroughfare, Glacial Lakes has exits.
One of my favorite exits is in Spicer, located a little past the trail’s six-mile marker. Spicer is situated on the shore of Green Lake, the largest lake in the county.
Roads around the lake either have trails alongside them or shoulders designated for hikers and bikers.
It’s about 12 miles around the lake and back to Spicer, but I prefer returning to the trail about three quarters of the way to Spicer at Nest Lake.
There’s a bridge on State Highway 23 there and a paved path under it.
On the other side is the public access to Nest Lake and a ramp onto the trail.
An old railroad bridge on the trail crosses Nest Lake that is, in my opinion, one of the most picturesque spots on Glacial Lakes.
From there, the trail continues on to New London where there’s another exit.
Take County Road 9 past the town’s Mill Pond and through a colorful, old-fashioned downtown and continue on 9 until you reach County Road 148. Ride the shoulder of 148 —designated for biking — for 4½ miles and you’re at Sibley State Park.
One of my favorite exits from Glacial Lakes doesn’t seem to be an exit at all. Cross the road at the Stearns County line and there’s another trail which connects Glacial Lakes to the city of Paynesville.
The additional stretch of trail leads across Highway 23 to Paynesville Area Secondary Schools parking lot. Signs in the parking lot indicate the beginning of a 15-mile bike route around Lake Koronis.
Just pedaling out to Paynesville, around Koronis and back to Willmar is a 75-mile ride. Take a couple other exits and it’s not hard to ride 100 miles using Glacial Lakes as the central path of a day-long adventure.
On the web
http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/maps/state_trails/glacial_lakes.pdf
