Today’s Miles: 60
Total: 186
Wonderful day of riding today. There was really nothing that was note
worthy. Rode by many farms and dairies. One thing that I noticed is that there are a
lot of silos and dairy barns, but until the end of the day of riding, I didn’t see
any that were still operating. I imagine
that the small dairies are disappearing here as well as home. I haven’t seen any big dairies, however.
It was a day of riding the rolling hills. I don’t have an altimeter on my bike anymore,
so I can’t tell you how much we might have climbed, but the climbing up a hill
at 5 miles an hour and coming down the hill at 20 miles an hour gets a little
old. 10 minutes of climbing and 2
minutes of rest going down. That is just
the way it is around here. I rode Iowa
years ago and it is much the same. I guess I better not be complaining. I’m the one that signed up for this, right?
We have been averaging about 10 miles per hour each day
so far. That doesn’t sound like much,
does it? When you think of riding 60
miles in the day and average speed of 10 mph, well, you can do the math. That means 6 hours in the saddle. We stop about every 10 miles or so for a
little rest, so it is not uncommon for us to be finishing the day at 4 or 5 o’clock.
We are staying the night at a warmshowers host near
Hayward WI. It is the home of Ethyl and Monte.
They are a wonderful couple. They wanted
to cook us dinner and they like to prepare food for their visitors that
represent the area. Ethyl made this soup
that had wild rice in it from the shores of lakes in the area. They go out and gather the rice plants and
take it to a thresher to process the rice.
We had the soup, plus Wisconsin cheese curds and corn on the cob. Very delicious. They took us out after dinner
to show us the 80 acres of woods they own behind their house. There are a bunch of maple trees back there
and in March or so, they tap the maple trees and gather the sap and make maple
syrup. They have a place outside to boil
the sap using wood as the fuel. Monte says
that he starts the fire first thing in the morning and has to boil a large pot
full of sap all day to get the sap down into the form to make syrup. They have about 100 trees on their land and Monte
says they have to collect the sap twice a day. It has been fun to get to know
them and see how the maple syrup thing works.
Well, talked to late in the night.
Wisconsin Dairy farm
Little town of Haugen were we stoped for a chocolate milk
Kind of hard to see, but a Mennonite buggy coming down the road.
Fall color coming on a select few trees.
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