Day 39: Birchwood, Canadians, The Driftless Area

Day 39: Monday July 14th, 2014.

Minneapolis MN to St. Croix Bluffs Regional Park, MN near Prescott, WI. 60.2 miles. 

Eager to hit the road, I got up earlier than usual. But, Ryan had already left for work, leaving behind a note:

Judd -

     Eat and take the Italian food with you from the fridge, your're welcome to blueberries and toast too.  Dunn Bros around the corner has the best coffee, and the Stone Arch Bridge is the best view of downtown Minneapolis.  Text me if you need anything.  Great talk at dinner, thanks for inspiring me to live some more of my own dreams.

                                  -Ryan

"Midwest Nice" for sure.  On the whole, my experiences with WarmShowers.org hosts have been amazing, and Ryan's generosity was no exception.  From the moment I arrived, I felt like I was staying with a long-time friend.

I made the trip up and down the stairs several times to get my bags and bike moved to street-level.  It was a pre-ride workout to say the least.  Then, just a few hundred feet away, there was Dunn Bros coffee.  Over coffee, I searched around for the bike shops in town, including those recommended to me.  Calling a few, I found the tire tubes I wanted (Schwalbe SV18) at Calhoun Cycle shop.  These tubes are lighter than comparable versions, but very durable, holding steady pressure for up to 30 days (except when you puncture them!).  

I made my way to the shop through the incredible network of bike lanes, bike paths, and "share the road" streets.

Along the way, I passed beautiful old homes, many restored, and some in the restoration process.

Arriving at Calhoun Cycle, I met "Kat", who had the tubes I spoke about over the phone waiting at the counter for me.  For $8, they offered to replace the rear tube and patch the tire properly with a "tire boot".  They were very helpful and friendly.

Kat recommended a breakfast/lunch place for me that was on the route I would be taking out of the city.  So, I followed her recommendation, traveling East through the Green Belt, making my way to the Mississippi River.

Sunken in many places, the Green Belt provides an uninterrupted freeway of sorts for bicyclists and pedestrians, with intersecting streets passing by overhead, and occasional "off-ramps", or maybe more appropriately referred to as "up-ramps" that can launch you back into the city from this other-world.

On the Green Belt, I passed by FreeWheel Bike shop.  I hit the brakes.  This was the place that Mike and Brandon recommended the day before.  I realized that I didn't buy extra tire boots to have on-hand in case I needed to patch a tire on the road.  So, I stopped in.

FreeWheel contains a full bike shop, cafe, and locker rooms for passing cyclists to stop and take a shower, change into work clothes, etc.  There's no parking lot for this bike shop.  The only way you can access it is to get on a bike and ride down the Green Belt.  While inside, one of the employees introduced me to Ben, the shop's marketing person.  He took my picture outside with my bike to post on their Facebook page.  And, after describing to him my great experience over at Calhoun Cycle, I discovered that Ben was Kat's fiance.  Small world!

Moving on, I made my way to the Birchwood Cafe, Kat's recommendation, and a must-stop for anyone spending an afternoon in Minneapolis.  The food was fresh, local, and outstanding.  I started with the poached garlic and cauliflower soup.

I then followed that up with the Housemade Pasta; tagliatelle, parmesan, arugula pesto, sunflower oil, sauteed seasonal vegetables.  Seriously, it was amazing.

Rejoining the Adventure Cycling Association Northern Tier bike route, I rode across the Mississippi River and headed through Minneapolis' twin, St. Paul.

I made my way East-Northeast toward Stillwater, a small town with a lot of character on the St. Croix River, the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The route mostly followed the Gateway State Trail, another old rail line converted into a beautifully paved bike path.  It was fun passing over the old railroad bridges, their massive amounts of steel infrastructure designed to support tremendous weight providing a passover for my 2-wheeled excursion.

Rain started falling, and I ignored it for as long as I could before it really started coming down.  I then put on my rain jacket and pants, continuing on.

Nearing Stillwater, a gang of loitering troublemakers, each sporting powerful weapons of minor abrasion, collectively created a barracade on the trail, a sit-in of sorts, haulting any bike traffic.  I stopped a short distance away.  They didn't seem to have any interest in providing a pass through, and their confidence in holding their ground was intimidating.

"Enough with the standoff", I thought to myself.  I started pedaling as fast as I could, my plan to barrel right through the middle of them.  They started conversating with each other, "Is he really going to try it?"  "What should we do, eh?"  Before they could formulate a plan in their Canadian accents, I was about to bust through.  I cringed, hoping they wouldn't aim for my legs.  Phew!  Unscathed.

Stillwater is a beautiful riverside town with lots of shops and restaurants.  A somewhat touristy place in the Summer, it was definitely buzzing with activity.

In Stillwater, I was routed up 2nd Street,  by far the steepest hill of my trip so far.  It was short, but incredibly steep, reminding me of a recent drive through the streets of San Francisco.  I can't imagine that anyone drives on this hill in the Winter.  I dropped down to the lowest gears before hitting the base of the hill, then stood up and pedaled the whole way.  My breathing and heart-rate quickly intensified, maximizing the limits of both.  I wasn't sure if I was going to make it about 75% of the way to the top, which poses a challenge as I'm barely moving forward to begin with, and my feet are locked into my pedals.  I pushed on with all my might until I reached the top, gasping for air, feeling as though my heart was expanding and contracting my chest with each beat, pounding for several minutes afterward.

After having a meal in Stillwater, I headed South in what would be a few days of traveling along the St. Croix and Mississippi River floodplains, along the border of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, along the historic River Road that follows the Mississippi to New Orleans, and through the "Driftless Area" - a large region in extreme Southeastern Minnesota, Southwestern Wisconsin, Northeastern Iowa, and Northwestern Illinois that was entirely bypassed by all 4 major glacial advances of the Pleistocene epoch (roughly 2 million to 10,000 years ago).  "Drift" is a term referring generally to glacial deposits.  The lack of glacial activity in this region has left the area exceedingly hilly.

Just South of Stillwater and on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River, I passed a massive smokestack situated on 120 acres of riverfront property.  It was the Exel Energy coal-burning power plant.  Igniting coal at 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit, it dominates the horizon with it's imposing infrastructure.  This is the first of several that I would pass over the next few days, probably conveniently located riverside to utilize the river as a transportation pipeline, moving coal by way of big barges.

Approaching 8:00 pm, I was getting anxious to find a place to camp.  I was about 5 miles from a bridge crossing that would take me across the St. Croix River to Prescott, Wisconsin.  But, without a campground in town, I decided to stop short at St. Croix Bluffs Regional Park, on the Minnesota side, to camp for the night.  The park, on the bluffs over the floodplain and river, is a lush forest of oaks and maples, with brand new clean bathrooms and a boat launch for those wanting to cruise out on the river in search of walleye.

With temperatures in the 60's all day, plus rain, I had my first set of goose-bumps since the coast of Oregon, prompting me to buy a bundle of oak for $5 and have my first campfire.  It took a while to light the darn thing, but I got it going eventually and it was a great way to take the chill off (and keep the mosquitos at bay) before retiring for the night.