We once again stopped at the library on our way out the next morning, and google told us that we only needed to go 60 miles, which was good because it was supposed to start raining at 3:00.
On the road, we noticed yet another peculiarity of western Wisconsin, hounds. Many of the houses we passed had 3 or 4 large, loud hounds. Every time we passed, without fail, they would all begin frantically baying as soon as they saw us.
For lunch, we stopped at a bar and grill in the middle of nowhere. I've not actually been in very many rural bars. Let's just say it was a cultural experience
As soon as we turned off the main road toward our hosts' house, the road started rising, and continued to go up for probably close to 3 miles. It rose and fell, but always more rise than fall, with some of the climbs forcing us into our lowest gears and down to 4 mph.
Joe and Lavonne would not be home when we arrived, but had trustingly offered to leave the doors unlocked for us. Their beautiful old farmhouse was far back into the country side, at the end of dirt road with only two houses on it. We found it without a problem, and later in the evening got to meet our hosts. Ironically, there wasn't even any any rain that night, but getting to meet new people and sleep in real beds made the stay totally worth it.
May 30
The weather forecast had shown a 70% chance of rain all day, so we weren't sure about what we where going to do, but the morning dawned with sunshine and continued to look beautiful, so we decided to risk the meteorologists' predictions and ride the 50 miles to our next destination, St. Croix Falls State Park.
Meanwhile, the rest of the family was busy loading into the truck and driving to Iron Mountain MI, from where they would drive to our campground and meet us the next day.
Luckily, the good weather held up for the rest of the ride, and not a drop of rain fell on us. We encounter some of the largest hills we had yet seen, and in the middle of one long descent, a ski resort suddenly came into view. Of course, Pop, a ski junkie, had to stop and check it out, and we even found some unmelted snow.
After an unintentional detour that took us 10 miles out of our way, we climbed one more massive hill and descended into the campground. After we had picked a campsite and paid, the woman behind the counter told us, "it's all downhill, so you'll just be able to coast the whole way." What she didn't mention was the grade of the downhill, and the fact that there was more than one sharp curve. On my fully loaded bicycle, I flew down a road posted at 10mph at no less than 36mph, curves and all. The resulting rush took me a good 30 minutes to come down from.
Just as we where climbing into the tent, it started to rain, and continued off and on for the rest of the night.
May 31
The rest of the family was scheduled to arrive sometime in the afternoon, so in the meantime Pop and I did some laundry, visited the library, watched a friendly jumping spider, and discovered a blue heron rookery.
At about 2:00, the rumble of diesel v8 proceeded the arrival of the rest of the family, and chaos descended immediately onto the campsite. For the rest of the afternoon, we loafed around and explored the campground. Right on cue, it started raining after dinner, and everybody retreated to the tents for an early bedtime.
June 1
We decided to spend another night at the campground just so we could have more time to mess around and explore. In keeping with those goals, we decided to hike a trail that supposedly had a waterfall at the end. Along the 1.5 mile trail, we found the ruins of what we later found to be silver creek mansion. Sure enough, the trail terminated at a picturesque little waterfall, where a grassy marsh emptied over small cliff before burbling merrily on its way.
On the way back from the trailhead, we stopped at the park office to purchase another night and got some unpleasant news. Apparently, someone had made a reservation for the campsite we where on, and we had until 3:00 to clear out. This gave us merely 2.5 hours to complete the massive task of tearing up all our stuff and wedging it into the truck. As we frantically rolled tents, stuffed sleeping bags, and stowed food, we tried to figure out where we would go for the night. There didn't appear to be many campgrounds directly west, so we decided to load everything up and drive north, from where we could follow my Adventure Cycling Association maps and hopefully find some more campgrounds. In record time (and rain) we packed 7 bikes, 8 people, and mounds of junk into the Excursion and drove off.
About 2 hours later, the truck went cu-klunk-brrrrrrr... It felt like we had just hit a massive rumble strip, but we where on a smooth road. We pulled over and Pop got out to check stuff out, but nothing appeared to be visibly wrong. Puzzled, Pop got back in and accelerated back up 60mph before it did it again. So, we limped a few miles to the town of moose lake and tried to figure out what to do. While the management tried to figure out what to do, the rest of us watched snowmobiles zip across a lake in the town's annual snowmobile watercross. For lack of better options, it was decided that we would look around for an auto parts store and go from there. The first one we tried was closed, but Pop got a tip at the second one about some guy who was willing to look at it. The auto store people even called ahead and let him know we where coming. A quick drive later, we pulled into a very small one lift garage owned and occupied by an older guy named Fred. He was super cool about the whole thing, even let all the kids stay in the truck while it was on the lift. Within minutes, both he and pop where tinkering away on the trucks front end, looking for a solution to our mystery noise. After an hour or so, the truck was lowered back down and taken for a test drive, but with no success. After Fred had slowed down and gotten the noise to stop, he said "well, let's try putting it in four wheel drive, just to see what happens." After turning the switch to 4wd, he sped up to 50, then 55, then 60. And the truck remained silent. Keeping the transfer case engaged wasn't really a permanent solution, but with any luck it would work long enough to get the fam home after they where done with me. Fred was only going to let us pay him $10 for some oil they'd used, but I think Pop got him to take a bit more.
Because of the time we lost, not to mention, temperatures in the 50's and the threat of rain, we decided to just stay in a motel that night. After a handful of calls, Pop snagged us a room with three beds for some really good price. Even so, cramming 8 people into a single motel room was pretty tight.
June 2
Oh, I forgot to mention, the boys saw a bear the day before, as the rest of us where in the packing process. The had taken a shortcut trail up to the town of St. Croix Falls, and apparently had seen it off the side of the trail, maybe 100 meters from our campsite.
Now that we where on ACA maps, the route planning was significantly easier. From the motel, Ellie, Pop and I would ride 65 miles to a tiny forest service campground on Cass lake, where Mom and the rest of the crew would have staked out a spot and set up camp. For the first time on our trip, we actually had a headwind, but the difficulty it created was offset to some degree by our lack of panniers. Nevertheless, the wind and a busy, frost heaved highway made for riding that was a bit unpleasant.
While riding, we where chased by at least 4 at different times, plus one large lab that seemed to be sizing up my leg. we also saw a pelican flying overhead
The campground turned out to be really nice, and had lots of interesting animals to watch. For some reason, this part of the Midwest has resident pelicans. There where flocks of at least 20 of them flying around and swimming in the lake. We also saw quite a few bald eagles soaring about. The boys, who thoroughly explored the campground, brought back news of a beaver sighting, and tourist friendly beaver was thoughtful enough to swim over to where us lazy people seared around the campfire could see him. On the whole, it was a very good day, with warm temperatures, sunny skies, and good camping.
Pop checking out the lifts
Snow!
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