Start: 7:54 AM

Finish: 4:20 PM  

Saddle Time: 5:20

Ascent: 1,368 feet

Descent:  1,378 feet

Miles: 60

Total Miles: 2,119

Highlight: Crossing over into Wisconsin, state number 6.

Lowlight: Crossing back into Minnesota for a place to stay for the night. Minnesota isn’t bad but this section of road was heavily traveled.

Cyclemeter:  Follow this link to see the data I’m collecting with the cyclemeter app. You can see gps information, speed, elevation, distance, cadence and heart rate. Better viewed on a computer where it’s easier to play around with the graphs.

Minnesota and Minneapolis continue to impress. Almost all of my riding out of Minneapolis and St Paul was on dedicated bike trail or bike lanes on the street. Riding in the city feels very safe. For any cyclists out there, if you are considering riding into or through Minneapolis, don’t be deterred by the city, it’s very bike friendly and safer than biking across Montana.

I followed Google Maps bike directions today to Prescott, Wisconsin where I rejoined the northern tier route.  I headed southeast out of Minneapolis and into St Paul. The route went through some very nice old neighborhoods with houses likely built a century ago. Mature trees made it difficult to take decent pictures.

Since I was in a city and my route today wasn’t all that long I decided to stop for a proper second breakfast, something I’ve rarely done on tour.  Hope Cafe was on my route, a nice breakfast place in an old firehouse.  I had a great biscuits and mushroom gravy along with hash-browns made with bacon and cheese. Should keep me fueled for a while.

My route crossed the Mississippi a few times as it snakes through the twin cities, including the interstate 495 bridge with a large, separate bike/pedestrian path.  They really make the city bike and pedestrian friendly.

I crossed over into Wisconsin where the St Croix river meets the Mississippi.  They didn’t have a Wisconsin sign but I was later able to take a picture downstream while crossing back into Minnesota for the night.  

For the next several days I will follow the river south into Iowa. By “following the river” I imagined having the river by my side, I didn’t look all that closely at the map.  The route meanders away and back to the river as it heads south, into farmland and as I found out, hills.  I was surprised by the hills I encountered in Wisconsin.  A couple were long 7% grades, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Montana at least a couple weeks ago.  Full on climbing for a while.

I crossed back into Minnesota for a place to stay, at the AmericInn in Red Wing. It’s a chain by Wyndham I’ve never stayed in, thought I would give it a try.  There looks to be a good ale house down the road for dinner.  Tomorrow I may camp at a Wisconsin state park along the way.