Round Lake Michigan - Day Nine

Green Bay, Wisconsin to Long Lac State Park, Wisconsin

The original online journal entry:

Actual Date: 2005-07-20
Uploaded: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:10:38 -040
Distance: 127.06 km

I covered a lot of distance yesterday so this morning I let myself sleep in until 7 am eastern.

After a great banana pancake breakfast complete with hot chocolate and whipped cream I climbed back on the bike and warmed up my muscles in the Green Bay traffic.

The forecast was for rain and southerly winds today which is exactly what came my way!

Once my warm up was complete I headed south right up a 200 vertical foot climb complete with a strong headwind and some driven rain.

Few, if any, fitness books will tell you to follow a long distance ride with a day of climbing hills but that's exactly what I decided to do today. I've been really missing the hills since Cadillac so today seemed like an excellent time to go play.

According to the bike computer I climbed 590 meters and decended around 300. I started the day around 494 meters (relative) and ended at 620 meters (relative). Throughout the day I climbed hills and generally enjoyed myself throughly. Tomorrow promises more of the same.

Obviously in a day that starts out rainy, clears up, rains again and then clears up once more the cloud watching moments are incredible. I especially enjoyed the sights in a small town called St Cloud that I passed through. A very nice place.

I think today's highlight has to be an amazing stretch of highway 67 in the Kettle Moraine area. This road was more fun to ride then a rollercoaster with lots of twists and turns along with plenty of complementary ups and downs. This is probably my favourite riding road of all time. Definately worth another ride if I ever return to this area again.

Various estimates put me at 50 to 90 miles almost directly North of Waukesha. It's likely that tomorrow will conclude this segment of my Round Lake Michigan adventure but only time will tell. (grin)

~Jamie

Post tour comments about this day:

The day started out hot and muggy. Although I was already in the southern end of Green Bay I still had some traffic to pedal through before I finally escaped the last big city of my tour.

After crossing a bridge above a dam I ended up taking a paved rail trail for about three kilometers. The trail headed more west at the point where the pavement ended so I turned off and continued climbing the hills in a Southerly direction.

While climbing the first big hill of the day I encountered moderate head winds caused by the downdraft from some storm clouds above me. Rain accompanied the wind but although it tried the storm was unable to dampen my spirits on this wonderful day.

My muscles were a little sore initially but with a bit of patience they warmed up and began delivering the power needed to fully enjoy the hills and there were a lot of hills on this day! The nicest thing is that the roads up here were very, very quiet with a car coming along perhaps every 15 to 20 minutes most of the day.

Apparently this area was heavily transformed with the passage of glaciers during the last ice age. Of course this meant lots of climbing and descending but at this point in the touring I knew that I would be able to make it to my pickup point in time barring some kind of physical injury. This knowledge really made it easy to take side trips, route a little bit out of my way, talk to people and just enjoy myself in general.

I mention St. Cloud specifically because the clouds opened up giving me a wonderful display of streaming light just as I arrived and because the people I talked to in that town were incredibly friendly. It's a very small town and yet it had a very nice service station/convenience storm in the center that allowed me to check email, buy some food and enjoy a great conversation with two locals.

Highway 67 is worth another mention too. When I entered this road I had altitude to spare so for awhile the road descended giving me some thrilling rides on sweet curves and rolling hills. Just like with a rollercoaster there were some hills that required a bit of hard pedaling to summit but some helpful deer flies provided plenty of motivation to keep moving (grin).

All things considered I believe that this day was probably my second most favourite day of the tour.

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