I’m back from a euphoria-inducing 8-day, 600-mile bike camping tour across Iowa and Wisconsin.
The ride combined RAGBRAI (a 15,000-person group ride across Iowa with pork chops, pie, live music, and beer in tiny towns along the way) and a solo ride across beautiful, rural Southwest Wisconsin.
The mix of mostly good weather, wildlife (fireflies, startled rabbits, and red-winged blackbirds), friendly strangers, no email, the ability to improvise and change plans on the spot (the flexibility of carrying a tent…), and plenty of time to ride alone and drift between states of present observation and introspection are why I always come back to bike touring…
So while it can’t really convey the feeling, here’s a story-in-photos of the final two days (220 hilly miles, riding from sunrise to sunset):
The last day of RAGBRAI was more scenic than usual, with fast twisty downhills and a few uphill slogs (anyone who says Iowa is flat was in for a bit of a shock), and after ceremonially dipping our tires in the Mississippi and stopping for a celebratory ice cream (which would turn out to be important later), I bid my friends farewell as they headed to the airport.
And then there I was, bags strapped to my bike and riding out of Gutenberg, a long uphill slog on a gravel shoulder as team RVs and trucks whizzed by (though one bystander did suddenly rush me… and give me a five-step running push uphill).
Instead of continuing to Dubuque and a bridge, I cut down a dirt road to the Cassville ferry… and ran into two friendly women stopped in their car as a freight train went by. They offered me a beer and we chatted for a while about how RAGBRAI used to be more rowdy (more nakedness and night riding back in the 90s when they last rode it). I’ve found everyone in Iowa has some story from its past…
We’d all just missed the ferry but sat back to wait for the next one, and everyone was excited I’d come so far to ride across their state.
Among the people I met and briefly chatted with was Pete, who bike or motorcycle tours 70+ days a year and has a blog.
I’d vaguely planned to cut this day off at 80 miles and get a motel in Cassville, but the two places in town were sold out. I looked up an RV campground that was just a few miles down the road and had exactly one spot left (and what sounded like a wild, raucous party going on in the background when I called them), but as I was leaving town I ran in to Pete again. He mentioned his map showed an Army Corps of Engineers camp site on a rural side road another 20 miles down the river, and I still had some energy in my legs, so why not?
After two hours of spectacular (if hilly) riding on Country Road O and Rt 133 we passed through Potosi (population 800), which didn’t have a motel or even a general store yet boasted an impressive brewpub and museum. We took a break there for dinner, and the teenage hostess (in braces, friendly and bored by how little there was to do in her town) got excited when she heard we were camping and gave us detailed directions to the campground.
The one photo of my bike from the trip (the trusty Long Haul Trucker, with medium-wide 26x1.5" tires that can roll over gravel or dirt and run at 75psi for comfort, a springy leather saddle, and extra-large custom waterproof panniers, which continued to travel well).
Old beer tankards in the museum case:
Dinner took a while (and then as we left we met the husband of someone in the founding family and got to hear more history), so it was pitch black by the time we got back on the road. Without street lights or a moon the 3 miles to the Grant River campground were a little hairy– good thing I had a light.
After setting up camp I curled up in my tent with a thrilling read– the Bike Fed Wisconsin Bike Maps (which color-code roads by traffic, shoulder, and paving) to look at the next day…
In a way, route planning’s easier in more rugged terrain where there may only be one feasible road and Google just points you along it, but Wisconsin provided many more options. Fortunately, a month ago, on a long shot, I’d written to the contact address on various web sites connected to Wisconsin cycling clubs or businesses to ask about certain roads I was looking at. And in a remarkable display of generosity, Pat, the owner of Around Wisconsin Bike Tours, not only gave me general tips but sent me a full turn-by-turn route from the river to Madison based on his touring experience, which I adopted for much of the next day’s ride.
I drifted to sleep satisfied with the day… and just to think– if I hadn’t stopped for ice cream earlier in the day and thus just missed the previous Cassville ferry, I probably would have never seen the Potosi brewery or camped here.
Up again at 5:30, a misty, chirping-bird-filled dawn on the bank of the Mississippi:
Pete and I were both eventually headed to Madison, so we rode together on and off for much of the day. Stopping for coffee at a log-cabin-themed local gas station that the hostess last night said she likes to support– the end of RAGBRAI was front page news:
From here on the riding was gorgeous. Sun, a light breeze, fast-moving clouds in different shades of blue and gray looking like paper cutouts (and only a few of them forming ominous, circular black patterns)… and just enough hills and turns to keep it engaging physically without ever being painful.
An unexplained hundreds-of-feet-tall ’M’ on a hillside:
At one point grass transitioned to amber waves of grain:
Friendly locals invited us in to refill water bottles and then other people from town showed up and we chatted for a while about alternate routes (the road behind the lumber yard was, as they suggested, a pleasant traffic-free shortcut), old motorcycles, and sunflowers:
The zig-zagging route I had written down took almost exclusively lettered country roads– these weren’t graded and looking back at elevation later were about three times more hilly than the main roads, but in a rolling up and down way where you could spin through most downhills into the next uphill.
About 50 miles into the day, we stopped in the Cornish former lead-mining town of Mineral Point:
This was where I’d originally intended to camp this night (if I’d stayed in Cassville overnight), but it was only about 2 so we kept riding– New Glarus would have motels and camp sites.
Car traffic was minimal– a few an hour, with the occasional almost-two-lanes-wide farm vehicle:
After a beautiful, swooping bit of riding along highway 39 East of Mineral Point, I realized I had about 3 hours until sunset and only 40ish miles to Madison. Rather than stop in New Glarus, maybe I could make it to Madison a day earlier than planned… so I said goodbye to Pete and turned my wheels North,
Of course it took this chance to start raining…
And the Badger Trail I’d eventually reach and get to follow 15 miles in to Madison was dirt and mud for much of the length. Well, sometimes the only option is to keep riding… not to say I wasn’t cursing the sloppy, in some cases flooded, and boringly straight and wooded rail conversion trail for much of its length.
Finally, as I was starting to tire and my cell phone was dying, I found myself in Southern Madison right before sunset, and made it to my friends’ house just slightly after dark…
A great end to a great vacation.