Pepin to Sparta July 26, 2022

Pepin to Sparta

July 26, 2022

Today’s ride of 91.6 miles was the longest of the week and constituted 22% of the weekly total of 408 miles.  That said it is going to be a strange week as we don’t really get a day off this week as Sunday which is the normal day off we will be getting on the Badger to cross Lake Michigan.  This brings up the next point after our next day off we will only have two weeks left.  Unbelievable!

This morning I woke up at 3:48 am and was not able to get back to sleep.  As I had closed my eyes at 9:00 PM this gave me almost 7 hours so it wasn’t so bad.  After rolling my tent and packing bags I headed off to what I knew would be a horrid breakfast.  If supper is bad so is breakfast.  No orange juice, no coffee, the egg bake looked so horrid I didn’t take any as it had huge chunks of burnt bread sticking out of it, and the sausages smelled awful.  I settled for some no-name granola which was really hard.

There was a lot of cloud cover as I hit the road in fact there was so much I was thinking I should have packed a rain coat.  The cloud cover was welcome and protected me from the sun until well after 10:00 am.   When the sun did finally come out the temperature went from around 68 F to over 80 F in no time flat. 

The route took us through a lot of rolling Wisconsin country side with not too much to report.  The first half followed the Mississippi which was kind of interesting as there were several locks with barge traffic and a busy rail line. The second half of the ride left the river and went east to Sparta where we are staying.  Right at the end of the ride was three really steep hills which were just killers. 

I was really glad to get in and went and found a half gallon of chocolate milk which I split with Barry.

Terry