The early morning rain left the clouds just covering the sun, maintaining the cool morning for a comfortable ride. We were surprised, with all the abundance of water, open fields, boarded by forests, that the only wildlife we had seen was turkeys and they were very camera shy.  The horses and cows, however, always seemed interested in our appearance on the roads.

Eighteen miles down the road we stopped at the Bicycle Bunkhouse in Dalbo.Just a few years ago, Don (retired Army pilot) converted his hundred year old barn to house touring bikers and is extremely generous with his time and facility.  We couldn’t make an overnight stay work with our schedule, but we did stop in to meet and thank him for what he has done for the biking community. He also showed us a nice shortcut to our destination.

We continued on our country road, crossing the Rum River at least twice more;or maybe we were just going in circles looking for the Coke and lime!

Off our bike course, we traveled through a larger town complete with a MacDonald’s where we bumped into Bill and Linda, whom we had met when we had just started this ride over a month ago.  Though we have all been heading in the same direction, they have been traveling east through Canada and had just dropped back into the states.  Spent some time catching up on where we had all been and where we were heading next.  Who knows, maybe we’ll see them again in another month.

Our shortcut provided by Don, put us on rails to trails path, sandwiched between the interstate and local road, it was nice to have it to ourselves.  We were only on the trail for about ten miles, which included a quick pass through another state,

a stop at the liquor store for necessary supplies and to meet Katherine, a local biker. As we chatted the clouds began to build; we hoped we’d make it undercover before it opened up.  Our turn from the town of Forest Lake, put the building wind directly at our back; it was just what we needed to tackle the last few miles of rolling hills.

Today we are heading to visit family that we had not seen in almost twenty years, but we were quite surprised when we heard our names being called as we were crawling up one of the hills.  Tony came pedaling up behind us to lead us to his lake cabin, saving us a few miles.  The last few miles to his home was a blur as we tried to catch up on 17 years of “what’s been going on”.  As we are tucking our bikes away, the skies opened and it poured…..perfect timing!  The rain didn’t last long and allowed the rest of the afternoon to RE-LAX! Not sure either of us could have ordered anything more perfect than visiting family in this settingespecially after 74 miles.  We’ll see everyone in a couple of days,time for a day off and to catch up with family.