Written by Dave

Day 57 – July 24 – 85 Miles, 2,385 feet climbing (Hiles to Tilleda)

Today we rode bag free. It was a long day and not having bags was joyful. Bag free and a tailwind, did I say joyful, make that double joyful. Thanks Laura. We’re happy that you are here and honest, it’s not just for your car.

It was hard breaking free of our cosy cabin this morning. It would have been great lingering over a second cup of coffee but progress must be made – we left about 7:15. We retraced the route that Laura drove us last night for dinner in Crandon. It took Laura driving last night about 15 minutes. It took us more than an hour pedalling this morning. Laura is not a speedy driver but to our bike speed brains riding in the car last night felt hypersonic. We are driving back to Portland, OR at the end of our trip. I can see it now, Nancy, Chris and I, we’ll all have steering wheel death grips pushing 30 MPH the whole way.

We stopped in Crandon for snacks and water, even after only 15 miles of riding. We thought it might be our only chance to stop during the day. It wasn’t, but since we stopped, we went ahead and had brekkie sandwiches. Somehow when we stop riding we are going to have to find a way to stop eating brekkie sandwiches at 10:00 in the morning. Our Garmin/Wahoo devices say that in just the riding part of the day, we are burning on average 2,700 calories. Eat to ride, ride to eat?

Today was a funny day scenery-wise. Until the half mark we had more northern lakes and forest. After climbing a steep hill in the middle of ride we suddenly entered the land of dairy farms and corn. We saw a lot more cows, even saw some where we could confirm udders. I suspect that whole “Wisconsin as America’s dairy “story is all about a north/south divide. Today’s second half scenery resembled the scenery we saw in Western Wisconsin before we looped up into the northern forests.

In the northern forest region, we saw heaps of snowmobile tracks along the roadways. We learned yesterday that they can’t ride on any asphalt, roads or bike paths. Their tracks apparently tear up anything but gravel/dirt bases. It appears that folks use snowmobiles as their car throughout the winter, when there is snow. The tracks alongside the roads have traffic control signs, mileage markers to the next point and they are pretty well groomed.  Wisconsin is reported to have over 25,000 miles of snowmobile tracks, mostly maintained by volunteers and clubs. It is not unusual to see donation stands and cups for the ATV and snowmobile clubs in the servos.

We stopped for lunch in the curiously named town of Phoix. The town name sounds fancy. The town isn’t. We settled for microwave burritos at the servo as there is nothing else in town. Our last stop was in Bowler only 6 miles short of our campsite for the night. We “bowled” along today with the tailwind giving us a nice boost. Sorry, I had to work a Bowler pun in there somehow.

Our campsite is called the Tilleda Falls Campground. We think Tilleda is the name of the town and the falls. It’s hard to say as there is very little to the town. We had to walk over a bridge right at the falls to reach our campsite. The falls are some of the only moving water we’ve seen in Wisconsin – everything else feels like connected lakes with swamp lands between them. I think we’ve seen one river in total. Today Laura drove through Eagle River – so the water does move some, or at least the things they call rivers.

Tomorrow we head to De Pere and our last camp before the ferry on Friday afternoon that will take us across Lake Michigan. We keep expecting to break out into populated parts of Wisconsin but it didn’t happen today. De Pere is sort of between Madison and Green Bay (I think) so for sure, we’ll start seeing more than nearly empty villages. Don’t get me wrong, we have really enjoyed the near traffic free riding that we’ve found in Wisconsin but it has sometimes felt pretty deserted.

Tonite, Chris and Laura are sharing a tent that is the same size that Nancy and I share. Nancy thinks we need a bigger tent. I suspect that tomorrow morning, Laura will say the same thing about Chris’s tent. I’ll report back on this tomorrow.