Bikeonomics: A ridiculous ride to the zoo

Last weekend, my girlfriend Anna and I decided that since we both like bike rides, and Anna likes zoos, we should combine both of these things with a bike ride to the Minnesota Zoo. So I grabbed my new bike, and Anna grabbed her old one-speed, and off we went (click on any of the pictures for a bigger version):

I had a slight advantage, as I was riding a brand-new 21-speed touring bike, while Anna was riding this insanely heavy single speed bike. It's about 40 miles to the zoo and back, and according to Google Maps it should take about two hours each way. Here's a map of the proposed route:

Notice how easy it is to cross the river on the map!

We packed some food, filled up some waters bottles and headed on our way. The first part of the trip passed relatively uneventfully. We reached the Mississippi River and biked parallel to it for a while. The Bike paths near the river were all underwater, so we just took the road:

We took a break for lunch by the airport. Lots of planes were flying overhead, and I tried to take a picture, but my camera takes like 3 hours to turn on, so no dice.

We had peanut butter and jelly AND banana sandwiches AND bananas!

But then things got complicated. See, the directions weren't exactly clear as to how you cross the river.

Really, Google Maps? Really?

So of course we got lost. We went South down this road that said "Authorized Vehicles Only", but clearly that was a dead end. We did see a turkey on our way back up, though. I again failed to take a picture of it. Then we went further south, thinking that we would run into a different road to cross the river on. We biked for like a half hour, because I thought we could go across on 77, but sadly there are no bike lanes on that highway...

Just when I was beginning to question whether we would ever figure out how to cross the river, we ran into an old dude riding an old bike around.

Us: Do you know how to cross the river?

Old Dude: There is no way to cross the river!

Us: Oh, really? We went all this way for no reason then...

Then the Old Dude promptly explained how to cross the river. And, following his directions, we found the path!

So we finally crossed the river! We rode for about another 40 minutes, eventually getting to the Minnesota Zoo at 4:07. It only took us about over twice as long as Google Maps thought. Once we got to the Zoo though, we were rudely surprised:

Sadtown

Closed. Of course the zoo would close at 4. Why wouldn't it close at 4?!?! Don't they know people just biked 20 (or more with all the detours) miles to get to the Zoo? I suppose we should have checked that beforehand, but hindsight is 20/20 eh? Anyway, Anna had a nice nap on a small patch of grass next to the parking lot:

After Anna's nap, we got back on our bikes and rode them to the Light Rail, which we took the rest of the way home. Right before we crossed the river we saw two coyotes, and then only a few hundred feet later, we saw three deer (don't know if you can see them in this picture):