Closing in on the end

September 23, 2023

Day 16: Sturgeon Lake to North Branch

TODAY IS the penultimate day the group will be together. We've enjoyed ourselves, and each other's company, for a bit over two weeks now. Now, the awareness of the transition from an insular bubble of friends spending all of our time together, to scattering in all directions and returning to the regular world, is beginning to creep in.

It's not melancholy, by any means, but it's there nevertheless and it colors our experience of the day.

The day's sunrise is beautiful, as so many have been on this trip.

Dryer vents atop the laundromat across the street from the motel. They must exist elsewhere but I've never before been so aware of them.

We've also been watching the weather forecast. It's showing a 75+ percent likelihood of rain for tomorrow, so today's very probably our last day of dry riding and good weather. Best enjoy it, then.

We parade out of the motel parking lot, once again following A D like so many ducklings imprinted on their mother. Retracing the final miles from yesterday we return to the Willard Munger Trail and resume our southward migration.

Three of us, including me, pull up at mile six for breakfast, leaving the others to continue riding on their own. It's a homey little cafe just off the trail. I've been feeling overfed for most of the trip- my own fault, of course- so limit myself to a small option and some coffee. That seems just about right.

A trailside mural, just at the point where we resume riding after breakfast.

We three return to the trail and enjoy the pleasant, very subtly undulating route for pretty much the remainder of the morning. Our lunch stop will be The Whistle Stop Cafe in Hinckley, just short of the halfway mark on the day.

Jim W, A D, and John all remark on the very new-looking light-colored pine planking on the walls. They think it's too much, and that at a minimum it needs some contrasting accent colors. I like it just as it is.

A larger-than-life statue of a voyageur in Pine City.

Gone-to-seed milkweed. Soon they'll all look like this.

Having spotted the group a half hour or more with my breakfast stop, I make a "tactical order" and have a bowl of chili for lunch. That eliminates the prep time and enables me to leave the restaurant with the rest of the group. In fact, pretty soon I'm all alone in front.

This is also the point at which we exchange the Munger Trail for the shoulder of Old U.S. 61, which will carry us to North Branch. At first the shoulder is pretty good, but for several miles it's badly decayed and broken up, much in need of repair. Traffic's light so I ride in the traffic lane for the most part, keeping a wary eye peeled for overtaking vehicles so I can pull off as needed.

A few miles farther on I spot A D in my rear view mirror. I have to say, he moves right along on his recumbent. It takes another dozen miles but eventually I flag slightly and poof! he's past me and up the road. The cat-and-mouse diversion has gotten us fifteen or more miles farther toward our objective, and we make our final rest stop in Rush City.

This building is a curiosity to me. It's dated 1896, and stands alone at the crossroad. The rest of Rush City is a couple blocks to the west. Why the odd, solitary placement of this one?

I wonder whether this is a reference to the prophesy in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" where the blind seer foretells "You shall see a cow, on the roof of a cotton-house."

We get a break from the miserable shoulder a few miles from North Branch, in the form of road construction and fresh new asphalt. I'll take it!

Clouds have begun to set in, so I'm glad to reach our destination for the evening and get off the road. All the usual end-of-day routines are observed: shower, change, meeting, dinner.

We discuss the weather forecast and agree to review the situation in the morning, making the ride/no-ride decision at that point. A couple of our number very much want to ride if conditions permit, even if they're only marginal. The rest are, at best, ambivalent. But we're all willing to take the wait-and-see approach. Since there's nothing to be done overnight anyhow, that seems eminently sensible.

Today's ride: 66 miles (106 km)
Total: 736 miles (1,184 km)

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