An enthusiastically northerly welcome from Minnesota

We’re spending the night in Winona, a full 10+ miles north of where we had originally planned on spending the night. Once we realized that the ACA routes include a lot of “scenic detours” that are hilly and kind of take you away from where you actually mean to go, we decided to take the more direct routes in most cases. So today, we rode straight up along the river from Lansing, first along 26 and then along 14/61 north of La Crescent, rather than wandering west through Nodine and Pickwick like the ACA wanted us to do. The road is pretty darn scenic enough and overall its had really nice shoulders.

One complication was that for a little ways north of La Crescent, the route joined with Interstate 90, which, unlike the interstates in North Dakota, is closed to bicycles. Fortunately, someone at some point had put in a bike route to the side of the interstate, whose faded sign we could barely make out as we stood there stopped at the on-ramp, scratching our heads. The path seemed to be very hardly travelled, nearly completely covered with layers of fluffy cottonwood seeds in some parts, but it routed us right to where we could get on the road again. Perfect.

Also, it’s nice and flat along the river, which was especially helpful when faced with the strong gusting headwind that Minnesota was sending our way all afternoon. I do really poorly in headwinds–I get really discouraged, much more so than if I were pedaling just as hard and going just as slowly uphill–so I voted that we stay in a niceish hotel in Winona rather than in a campground or one of the funny-smelling motels we usually stay in. So if you’ll excuse me, the jacuzzi awaits.