Written by Dave

Day 56 – July 23 – 64 Miles, 2,380 feet climbing (Boulder Junction to Hiles)

We started the day at Boulder Junction Coffee and are happy to report the barista knew exactly what a cortado was and made them perfectly. There brekkie sandwiches were pretty good but not as filling as we had hoped for. We picked up a mini blueberry loaf for the road as it appeared that there were limited food stop options on our route today.

We had 3 more miles of the Heart of Vilas trail system to ride starting right in town. This section was a lot bumpier than yesterday as the pavement was older. All too often the contractor putting down trails does not do enough below grade work and tree roots start pushing through the surface. That’s what was starting to happen on our route today. It’s a shame really as it makes the trail virtually unrideable for anything but slow riders on 3 inch tires.

We left the trail network, turning eastward on County Road K, a listed Wisconsin “Rustic Road”. Wisconsin created the Rustic Roads program 45 years ago to provide hikers, bicyclists and motorists an opportunity to leisurely travel through​ the state’s scenic countryside. Today, there are 126 designated Rustic Roads spanning approximately 760​ miles through 61 counties. We like them particularly because the speed limit on them is set at 45MPH.

For us, CR K was nice and quiet. It seems, however, that not all is quiet just below the surface. Apparently there’s a big brew haw happening on Rustic Road CR K. We saw heaps of signs saying “Save our rustic road” and “Not on the rustic road” – for a spell it seemed like every property had a sign. Turns out that some folks are trying to get ATVs and UTVs allow on CR K. The sign people don’t want them. Online we found evidence of meetings being called short notice, votes not being counted, people being ignored and more apparent skulduggery. It’s a big controversy it would seem.

We eventually left the argy bargy behind, popping out on the busier, but less controversial, US Highway 45. We stopped for a snack at a servo before heading out on a 9 mile stretch of HW 45 – so much for having no food on the route today. HW 45 had a nice shoulder but lots of heavy truck and car traffic. We rode in a tight paceline and got it over as soon as possible.

Our next turn took us to an aptly named Chain O Lakes Road where we scooted past heaps of lakes on both sides of the road. We’ve seem heaps more lakes in Wisconsin than we did in Minnesota. It got me thinking “which state has more lakes”. So this afternoon I looked it up. According to official state documentation, Wisconsin has 15,074 lakes and Minnesota has 11,482 lakes. So Wisconsin wins, right? Well, not so fast. The Minnesota definition says a lake has to have greater than 10 acres of water. Whereas the Wisconsin definition is looser, calling anything it feels like calling a lake, a lake. If Wisconsin were to use the 10 acre rule, they would have only about 5,898 lakes. Seems that the two neighbouring states go at it quite often – lake counting being just one of their many friendly inter-state battles.

At the end of Chain O Lakes, we hopped on busy State Highway 70. The other day in Glidden, the innkeeper introduced us “virtually” to a couple riding a day ahead of us. For the last few days, they’ve been giving us forward intel from the road. We heard from them that Highway 70 was pretty busy but lucked out finding dry shoulders and not so many cars while we were on it.

Speaking of dry, rain was forecast today in much of our riding area. Some forecasts had it as high as 34% chance of showers. I pointed out to the team that 34% chance of showers is a 66% chance of no showers. I’m not sure that anyone appreciated my helpful comment. Luckily today, we had about 10 drops right at the end of the day as we pulled into Hiles, nothing more. That’s not to say we rode on dry roads. We had a few good sections of wet roads and some puddles. I was even scolded once for spraying Nancy while riding in front – that’s the downside of not riding with fenders or mudguards. And possibly the downside of not keeping a straight line when on front of the paceline.

When we arrived in Hiles, we found that only one very small servo was open and food options were nil. We ended up with fixings for egg and bacon rolls that we prepared at our cabin at the Pine Lake campground. The cabin we booked is practically brand new and very comfortable. Good thing, tonight we welcome a new member to our team and don’t want it to be too rough a first night. Chris’s daughter Laura is going to be “driving” with us for 4 days – she’s driving, we’re riding. Her car will be most welcome tonight or else we’d end up having another round of egg and bacon rolls for dinner. I think we’ll drive into Crandon and see what we can find – what a luxury a car is!

Tomorrow we were intending to camp near Bowler, or least that was the plan. We had a roadhouse picked out but it seems a little rough, so Nancy has found a nicer looking campground to shoot for. It’s about 85 miles but we won’t have bags so we should be able to handle it without too much issue.