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After enjoying my free breakfast of a bagel and a couple of cups of coffee, we headed out of Lancaster around 10am Saturday morning. Once again, it was sunny and warm for an early October morning. We headed straight north up US61 towards Viroqua, WI, with intentions of taking a little detour around Eureka Maple Woods State Natural Area just north of there. On the way up, we stopped at a gas station around Readstown, and had a nice conversation with a biker from Viroqua, who was just out for a morning ride before spending the rest of the day with his grandkids. The highlight of this stop was the opportunity of taking this picture:
Yes, that's an Amish buggy at the diesel pump.
Unfortunately, our routes were planned in the spur of the moment, and we somehow missed our intended stop off in Eureka, and wound up in Sparta. Luckily, WI16 runs along 90 into La Crosse, which is where we planned to have lunch and hop the river into Minnesota for a bit. We made it into La Crosse just after 12pm, and parked the bikes downtown. We walked around for about 15 minutes, and came across a restaurant called Fayze's Restaurant & Bakery. When we got to the hostess booth, we were told the wait will be a half hour, unless we wanted to sit at the counter. The counter consisted of 8 chairs, and 6 were empty! We sat right down, and had a great lunch. We started off with some fried cheese curds (heaven!), and the sandwiches were offered on fresh bread made in the bakery. Our waitress was very attentive, and extremely sweet.
We headed over the Mississippi on I90, and made our way north on the Minnesota side up US61. I've been this way now 3 years straight, and Jim got to experience it for the first time last year. This route is Mississippi Valley at it's finest! Very tall bluffs along the west side of the road, and a speed limit of 70 MPH! Needless to say, we were in Winona, MN fairly quickly.
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We passed through Winona and jumped back over to the Wisconsin side of the river. We rode us WI35 a bit, and this seemed to be where everyone was. We passed numerous classic cars, as well as many, many bikes. We stopped off in Alma, WI to check our location, and to plan another hop over the river. Last year, Jim wanted to check out Lake Pepin, but we simply didn't have the time. I've been up this way once before on the Wisconsin side, but wanted to check it out from Minnesota. We crossed the Mississippi from Nelson, WI, and proceeded up MN61 once again. Once again, we were not let down! Plenty of sweeping curves, and beautiful scenery.
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We stopped off in Lake City, MN, passing an accident that we missed by a few minutes. The decision was made by me (I'm sure without Jim's knowledge), that it would be pointless to check if we could help. There were already 20-30 people on the scene, so we rubber necked it, and got the hell outta the way.
As we made our way through Lake City, we passed a marina that was full of sail boats. This is the most mind blowing fact about this portion of the river: there are sailboats EVERYWHERE on Lake Pepin! Here are a few pictures we took, with the Wisconsin bluffs peaking up over the water across from where we were:
After we left Lake City, my intentions were to stop off in Frontenac State Park. As we were entering the park, a Hawk swooped down to the side of the road about 25 yards ahead of us. We pulled up quickly, and got to see this glorious raptor from about 5 feet away! This was one of the biggest Hawks I've ever seen! Unfortunately, we did not enter the park, since it was $5 per vehicle, and we were already an hour or so behind schedule.
We continued up 61 to Red Wing, MN, where we made our way back to the Wisconsin side of the trip. We stopped in Pepin to put on our jackets (I forgot how early the sun sets this time of year), and switched our sunglasses for our clear lenses. We still had another hour to go, and darkness was creeping in. I have a feeling we missed some good scenery heading through Durand, but made it to the hotel in Eau Claire just after 7pm. I had about 5 hotels to choose from while making the reservations, and chose one that advertised a hot tub. Lucky for us, THEY FILLED IN THE F*%CKING HOT TUB! I even paid an extra $10 for a poolside room!
We ended the night by marching a whole 75 feet across the hotel parking lot to Broadway Pizza and enjoyed the unseasonal weather eating and drinking on the patio. Perfect end to 9 hours of riding.
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