Written by Dave

Day 47 – July 14 – 98 Miles, 1.350 feet climbing (Marshall to Hutchinson)

We didn’t do much on our zero day yesterday other than the usual planning, bike cleaning, resting and shopping. So, nothing to post about really…

Today on the other hand was not as restful. In order to give ourselves two days off in Minneapolis starting on Tuesday, we needed to cover the 160 miles from Marshall to Minneapolis over today and tomorrow. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a good place to stop around 80 miles so today we had to ride almost 100 miles. Yesterday, Windy, the app we use for wind forecast, said that we’d have head/cross winds for the entire 100 miles. Late last night Windy changed the forecast saying we’d have tailwinds for 20 miles until a weather front passed through, followed by 80 miles of fairly light head/cross winds. The later forecast turned out to be just about spot on. How did we ever do this trip in 1992 when we didn’t have computers and smart phones, much less Windy apps?

Planning for a long day in the saddle, we agreed to a 6AM start. We managed to leave just about on the mark, just as the sun was coming up. Any earlier and we would have needed head lights in addition to our tail lights. I was on strict orders to limit my photo stops and was on my best behaviour only taking a couple sunrise photos while we cruised the first 20 miles with a tailwind. We could see the forecasted front passing and had some pretty good fog for a spell, combined with a changing wind through to Redwood Falls where we stopped for morning tea.

Here in the mid-west we’ve discovered that almost all of the servos have fairly decent brekkie sandwiches that have become our morning tea staple. Nancy prefers the egg and bacon vs the egg and sausage, and naturally also prefers the biscuit vs the croissant. Chris and I are not that bothered, either will do the job for which it’s intended. Sometimes Nancy and I share, sometimes we get our own. I should add that if we share one of the biscuit, egg and bacon versions, I have to keep a close eye on her. If I look away for a minute, my half becomes a quarter pretty darn quickly. Today, unfortunately for Nancy, they only had egg and sausage on a croissant.  We each downed one (well, I think Chris had 2) in an effort to keep the energy levels up.

There has been some flooding around Redwood Falls this spring but all that is left is debris around some of the bridges and a few puddles in the fields here and there. We had read about the floods but found it difficult to get information on the current state of affairs. We made it through without issue.

About ten miles past Redwood Falls we planned to turn right on County Road 2 but found road closed signs at the corner. The road had been repaved recently but they had already painted the center stripe so we were not sure if they were still working on the road or if possibly it had been flooded out. We took  a vote and 2-1 agreed to take our chances. Nancy was leaning towards “no”, cautious of having to retrace our route and add to our already long mileage day.  In the end ignoring the signs turned out to be a good call. We had 5 miles of perfectly smooth new asphalt with zero traffic to the other end of the closure, followed by 15 more miles of open but nearly abandoned new asphalt roads. It was like having our own private bike freeway where we could ride in a nice, efficient echelon to beat the pesky side wind.

We didn’t expect to find any more open shops until Hutchinson but lucked out when we took a slight detour off route to check out the small town of Buffalo Lake. There the one and only shop was open, plus the town park water taps were turned on. We refuelled and made a collective sigh. It was hot and humid but at this point we’d ridden 75 miles and we knew that we could ride the remaining 23 miles without having to worry about water.

We reached Hutchinson about 1:30, way earlier than we thought we would and let out a collective woohoo. We didn’t think we could check into our hotel that early so we decided to stop at a local coffee shop for snacks and cold drinks. We were the only customers and that’s probably good thing as we were all pretty sweaty and honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of bike shorts as salt-encrusted as those that Chris was wearing. Nancy and I celebrated arrival with “smashed avocado on toast”, a treat we haven’t seen very often on a menu since our days in Sydney.

Our hotel, The Cobblestone Inn, is about the best hotel we’ve had on the entire trip. We had the option to camp in town but none of us thought camping sounded much like fun when we were looking at a ride entailing 100 miles of head winds. We were tired but remarkably fresh on arrival (other than Chris’s bike shorts that is).

Tomorrow there is some rain forecast early but also Windy says we will have, “building afternoon tailwinds.” We are riding into a big city but 40 of the 60 miles are on regional and city bike trails. Our AirB&B is only 2 blocks off one of the trails so hopefully we can have a stress free entry into Minneapolis.