July 30, 2021
Day 60: Madison to Waukesha
On the Glacial Drumlin Trail
“How far does this go on?” Patrick asks. We watched the cyclist carry his bike around downed trees across the trail. “Into infinity,” he says. We had already pushed our bikes around two trees and now can see a third much bigger with a fourth beyond.
We are up at our usual time, but not to start cycling right away, instead to watch the Olympics football game Holland versus USA. By 8am the game goes into overtime, and we decide to start riding. This will get us to Waukesha at the correct time, after 2pm, for tonight’s Warmshowers host. The road to get us to the Glacial Drumlin Trail is a few block down the street. When we reach Cottage Grove there is road construction and a detour, but we still reach the trailhead. The first town of Deerfield we go into the town to a coffee shop for a second breakfast. The football is over by now: Holland lost on penalty kicks.
The Glacial Drumlin Trail refers to when glaciers bore down on this area and created wetlands marshes, rivers and ponds, along with hundreds of low cigar shaped hills called Drumlins
The Trail’s surface is fantastic, and goes through towns of London, Lake Mills, and Jefferson with views of marshes, farmland and lakes. Local trail use by people walking their dogs and cycling picks up when we get near the next town.
At Jefferson there is a bit of meandering around the major roads to find the official trail again. The next stretch goes through or near four towns to Waukesha: Helensville, Sullivan, Dousman and Wales. Between Sullivan and Dousman, just when we are thinking this is the best trail we’ve been on, we start seeing evidence of the storm a few nights ago. More branches and leaves are on the trail. Then we reach a big branch blocking the trail and we push our bikes around, further on another tree limb blocks the trail, we can push around this one too. Then we are faced with whole trees, and we can see a cyclist carrying his bike around one further on and we wait to talk with him about the condition of the trail. We need to turn around.
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We only need to backtrack a small distance to the side road that will get us to US 18 to Dousman. As we go through the neighborhood, chain saws are heard in several spots. We rejoin the Trail after Dousman. At Wales we stop at Mama D’s and Patrick comes out with two ice cream sandwiches, this is an inch of ice cream between two chocolate chip cookies. From here we have a gentle decline to Waukesha.
Tonight’s WS hosts gave us great directions to their house, just off the GDT. We visit Barb and Gene, share stories and learn of their adventure of Kayaking Mississippi River in the wooden tandem kayak they built themselves. They did service projects along the way and Barb has published a memoir that highlights the charities. Paddle for a Purpose | A Memoir by Barb Geiger Chronicling our 5-month Service Adventure
They take us for a nice Italian dinner at Mia’s and then we walk around downtown and experience Friday Night Live Music that goes on every Friday during the summer. There is an interesting junction in Waukesha where 5 streets merge. Bands were scattered down the streets so not to compete with each other.
We are up later than usual but before retiring, they give us advice on the route tomorrow…almost entirely on trails.
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"From a low of about two dozen breeding pairs in the 1930s to more than 20,000 pairs in recent years, the big, bugling birds have become a common sight in the Badger State."
3 years ago
Today's ride: 61 miles (98 km)
Total: 2,501 miles (4,025 km)
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