Pat and Caro Cycle Home: Day 39 - Eveleth, MN to Amnicon Falls State Park, WI (T.D.: 128.8km; S.T.: 6h31min)

I make notes at the end of each day in a little journal to remind me of exciting/interesting details for when I write up these blog entries when we find a computer. For today, I wrote at the top “I felt great today”. You’d have to ask Caroline how she felt (if I remember correctly, she didn’t feel as great as me, but still pretty good). This was a day when you felt you could bike forever: cool temperatures, good tailwind pushing you along, and lovely scenery. I even got my second flat tire of the trip today, and still felt great (apparently). Our goal was to make it to Duluth, MN, where we thought we might take a rest day, but we ended up pushing on to Wisconsin, and staying in a lovely state park not far from the border.

In fact, we ended up by-passing the Duluth city-centre, but in doing so, had to contend with one of the most harrowing routes of the entire trip as we crossed state lines through a mass of overpasses, underpasses, and one long, windy bridge that connects Duluth, MI to Superior, WI. The industrial lakeshore was weirdly beautiful, if a bit terrifying - with a landscape that crossed a Group of Seven painting with an Edward Burtynsky photograph, and a dense road plan that approximated our worst cycling nightmares. All this, and I still “felt great today”. I do remember collapsing in front of the Welcome to Wisconsin sign and feeling quite pleased with the fact that we had survived.

Once in Wisconsin and the heart rate had time to settle down a bit, we dined at the Old Town Tavern, where we met a one-legged man who had cycled to Colorado in his youth. Later, at the campground, we met a two-legged man who had just finished a ride from Vancouver, WA to Chicago.