We came down to breakfast this morning to a veritable feast. Brenda, our hostess, had assembled quite a spread for us and the four other guests staying over last night. "I hope you like peaches", she stated when we entered the dining room, and proceeded to describe the peach cobbler and vegan peach soufflé she had invented and assembled from scratch.
Brenda serves breakfast at a common table at a fixed time, 9:00. That makes a bit of a late start if you've got a long bike ride ahead, but today it worked out fine because we have an easy ride ahead of us. It is virtually flat the whole way to Eau Claire; and amazingly enough, the wind is our friend for the third straight day. After being blown south for two days in a row, we're reversing direction and heading northeast up the Chippewa - and the wind has conveniently shifted with us.
Brenda, the proprietress at Turning Waters B&B, proudly takes a photo of her creation for the morning.
Outside our B&B in Wabasha, overstuffed from the elaborate breakfast spread - which Brenda seems to have captured nicely here, with the sun highlighting my rounded abdomen. Good thing it's an easy ride today. Bikers should take note of this place. Wabasha is a lovely small town to lay over, and is on the ACA Northern Tier route. Besides the fine breakfast you can expect, read the sign - it is also a small home brewery, so you can look forward to sampling the current tap list when you arrive.
The twenty mile ride to Durand, Wisconsin will not rank as a highlight of the tour. The first three miles were beautiful, bicycling across the Mississippi on the Wabasha-Nelson Bridge and then crossing the lush green delta of the Chippewa River. After that though, it was 17 fast downwind, upriver miles on Highway 24. Very much like the last two days on Highway 61 - but without the generous shoulder. It was just busy enough to gradually become stressful, and we were both happy to see the outskirts of Durand where we broke for lunch.
After crossing the Mississippi and entering Wisconsin, the next two miles cross the delta of the Chippewa River, a wide, verdant wetland crisscrossed with channels and lagoons.
I was attracted by this small farm beside the road, named Oink Alley. As soon as we stopped, we looked up and saw a bald eagle perched on the top branch of the dead tree on the left. He's not here though - he took flight as soon as I started focusing the camera on him.
It wasn't completely free of traffic though, including semis. The drivers were quite courteous and in general gave us plenty of room, but it was a bit too tight for our comfort. If I were doing this ride again I would add ten miles and detour onto back roads until getting to Durand.
In Durand, in front of a tavern flashing a Budweiser sign. I was surprised to learn that Wisconsin has the fourth largest concentration of Amish communities in the country, including one in Eau Claire county. I liked seeing this Amish buggy hitched up in front of the tavern, and circled it taking shots from several angles. The horse didn't approve though - his foreleg is lifted up because he's stamping his hoof to warn me off. Message received.
In Durand, having lunch at the riverfront. We've been on the highway until now, but we leave it behind here - we'll be on the Chippewa River Trail for the last thirty miles to Eau Claire.
The remaining thirty miles to Eau Claire we're on the Chippewa River Trail. For the next three miles we enjoyed almost complete solitude on the isolated, more-or-less paved trail through the river's flood plain. I think we saw only three or four other bikes, several bunnies scampering across the trail, and miraculously a single deer standing and staring at us from a short distance down the Trail before us. It was a wonderful, healthy-looking animal, and I think larger than ones we see in the northwest.
In Eau Claire we stayed in another Air B&B listing, continuing our experimentation with this new (to us) lodging choice. This experience was quite different than the stay at Anthony's home in Saint Paul, where we were greeted in, offered a glass of wine, and drawn into interesting conversation. In Eau Claire, no one was home but we had been provided access instructions before arrival. We had the entire downstairs house to ourselves, and scarcely interacted with the host at all. Fine, but different.
On the Chippewa River Trail. The first six miles were smooth, newly laid pavement (which we paid a toll for), but the next fifteen are well aged, rough asphalt.
A trail monitor watches us approach on the Chippewa River Trail. We engaged in a staring contest from fifty yards away for about a minute before she melted back into the trees.
On one of the more aged sections of the Chippewa River Trail. It was fine to bike on but it kept our speed down, constantly watching out for potholes and sandy patches.
Our room was about two miles southeast of downtown, in a residential neighborhood with no attractive dining options nearby. Rachael, who always carefully researches the eating choices in advance, has her heart set on the pistachio-crusted chicken she spotted on Houligan's menu. Two and a half miles away, it's a bit far to walk so we hopped on the bikes and coasted downtown. The dish was everything she had hoped for - the best meal of the tour so far.
After dinner we walked through town a bit, admiring the sculptures on display as part of Sculpture Tour Eau Claire. After that we biked back up the hill to our room and made an early night of it. Our weather is due to change and rain is in the offing, forecast to begin late morning. We plan to get an early start tomorrow and get as many dry miles in as we can before the rains commence.
The King of Spades (beach rock and steel, by Heather Wall; $12,000), one of this year's entries in Sculpture Tour Eau Claire: https://www.sculpturetour.org/tour/
A burdened biker, Eau Claire. I'm a bit disappointed in myself here - I should have captured the details on this curious sculpture. Oh, of course - so obvious. Book Peddlers (bronze, by Jack Moreford; $25,800).
