The Plan
After a year's delay, I'm back to getting ready for my tour of Wisconsin. I'll be using bike trails as much as possible, and Wisconsin has a lot of them! Using Google Maps with 'Bicycling' selected, I connected green lines (the bike trails) to make a loop that I could complete in four weeks, starting and ending at my house.
Here's the list of Wisconsin trails I plan to ride on:
- Badger State Trail
- Capital City State Trail
- U.S. Highway 12 Path
- Great Sauk State Trail
- 400 State Trail
- Elroy-Sparta State Trail
- La Crosse River State Trail
- Great River State Trail
- Chippewa River State Trail
- Mountain-Bay State Trail
- Fox River State Trail
- Wild Goose State Trail
- Glacial River Trail
- Ice Age National Scenic Trail
My detailed route planning always starts with placing 'push-pins' on the Google Earth globe for each place to stay and for each turn. Then I add more pins for back-up places to stay and places to eat. This is a slow process, since I usually end up reading on-line reviews for the places. This trip I'm going to try to camp more and motel less, though my wife did catch me reading a motel review. She said I shouldn't be looking at stuff like that.
With just two planned motel nights, my push-pin Google Earth KMZ file was complete on July 21, converted to GPX-format using GPS Visualizer, and up-loaded into my new DeLorme PN-40 GPS. (My PN-60 was having tracking problems last year, so it'll be the back-up DeLorme GPS this year.) My favorite GPS, which I'll also bring along, is the long-outdated Magellan MAP330. It's simple, and works well for straight-line routing and ETA. I use EasyGPS for getting waypoints loaded to it, and was done with that a few days later.
Much earlier in the year I purchased Wisconsin Bicycle Maps, and later a 2018 Wisconsin Annual State Trail Pass (required for the state trails). I also received a requested free City of Madison Bike Map & Guide. Done with route preparations!
One other pre-trip preparation I did (on July 25) was treating my shirts, pants, socks, boots, and some of my tent with permethrin. I'm hoping to repel ticks carrying Lyme disease, which appear to be plentiful in Wisconsin.
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