Great River State Trail

Today we rode 30 miles on the Great River State trail over the course of about 5 hours. The Great River trail is within a larger area called the Mississippi Flyway and passes through two National Wildlife Refuges. The surface is quite a bit rougher than the Elroy Sparta but the trail is far more interesting. The access point where we parked started us off with a long trestle bridge

We followed the trail north for about 14 miles passing through the Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge. Much of it was marshy areas and wetlands, a bit of forest now and then, varied and beautiful.

On the way back we detoured into the town of Trempealeau for lunch. We found the Bike and Bean which was doing some serious bragging about their ice cream

We both got sandwiches but ended up skipping the ice cream as the staff and food did not inspire confidence in the validity of that brag and we were pretty full anyway.

What a great ride. No pressure to be anywhere at a particular time. Lots of beautiful scenery. No cars to contend with and great weather with temperatures in the low 80s.

I do hope that Wisconsin gets some rain pretty soon though. Everything is getting really dry. We’re even watering all of the plants at the Airbnb each evening to help out our host. This Airbnb has been interesting – the owner is a professor and clearly lives here most of the time so freezer is packed with food, refrigerator has quite a bit, closet full of clothes… has worked out great for us as the kitchen is well equipped and we generally live out of the suitcases anyway. You never quite know what you’ll get in an Airbnb but we’ve been happy with them all so far.

Tomorrow we are heading for Eau Claire where we will be for 3 nights. Host there has messaged to ask what temperature we would like and to offer an early check in. That’s sounding pretty good! Also making tomorrow a day to rest the old bodies so won’t be much to report for a couple of days.