The Elroy-Sparta Trail, or not: Part 1

Ready to go...

As you may or may not know, a couple weeks ago I set out on a bicycle ride to Wisconsin.  I took lots of pictures and even wrote a bit about my trip in a journal (which of course I can't find anymore).  I planned to start from my backyard, bike all the way to Sparta, Wisconsin, camp out every night, and then bike back.  I was originally thinking of writing 7 entries on this blog about the trip starting right when I got back, but obviously that didn't happen.... So instead I'm just going to post about the trip when I can, until I've posted about the whole thing.  As always, click the pictures to see the full size, and leave comments if you want.  Here goes:

Knowing that I'd be carrying everything by bicycle for hundreds of miles, I wanted to minimize the weight of all my supplies.  So of course I ended up with more stuff than Jim Carrey before he got robbed by a little old lady:



Here's what my bike looked like before it was loaded up:

As you can see, since I bought the bike, I have taken off the "mustache" bars and replaced them with regular "drop" bars.  If you learn one thing from this blog, don't get mustache bars for a bike tour!  They suck - mustache bars only have about two hand positions, whereas drop bars can have four or more if you're creative.  This is important so you can move your hands around and keep your fingers from going numb.

The bike is also ready to roll with front and rear racks (to put bags on) and fenders (to keep me from getting soaked), and two water bottles.  To get ready, I also mixed up a huge bag of trail mix:

This shit was delicious!

Then I packed up the trail mix, bike tools, spare tube, food (LOTS), water, and a bunch of other junk into the panniers, and I used bungie cords and a used bike tube to strap a garbage bag with the tent and sleeping bag onto the back rack.  Because the Early Bird gets the Worm, I decided to leave at the crack of noon.  Anna was there to see me off:

Hug!

So was Anna's sister Becky:

And with that I was off!  Only it wasn't long before I realized that I had forgotten something.  I forgot to pack the stove, of all things.  Note: Next time I go on a weeklong bike trip, I plan on making a list beforehand.....Luckily I hadn't gotten too far, and Anna was nice enough to drive over and bring me the stove and fuel (Thanks again!).  Not that 10 miles would have made a big difference over a 300 mile trip, but I really did NOT want to start over after just one hour.  So off I was again.  I road east along the Mississippi River for a ways:

Then I ran into a part of the trail that was under construction:

 So I walked my bike along the trail for a little bit, and then got back on:

Good thing my bike is not a motor vehicle:

 

I passed the great suburb of Woodbury, which is great mainly because of the Trader Joe's location there that has tons of food in its dumpster.

Is it just me, or does this water tower look phallic?

As you can see in the last picture, it was starting to rain a bit.  Luckily, it wasn't too bad, and I put on my jacket and bravely biked onward along the Hudson Road bike path, despite numerous signs warning me not to:

Just kidding, these signs were for going on other trails...

After several hours of biking I reached the Minnesota-Wisconsin border.  I really really really wanted to take a picture of the sign that says "Welcome to Wisconsin!", but I couldn't find that sign from where I was biking.  So I took this picture instead (fireworks are legal in Wisconsin but not Minnesota):

Appropriate, don't you think?

I crossed the Mississippi River again into Hudson, Wisconsin, where I encountered the first major obstacle of my trip. See, I was planning on buying a Wisconsin bicycling map in Hudson, but the only bike shop in town was closed. I wandered around town trying to find a bike map somewhere else, but didn't have any luck, so I settled for getting a regular highway map of Wisconsin.

While trying to figure out which way to go, when I ran into two bicyclists from the Twin Cities - not once, not twice, but three times.  The second time, I loaned them my handy multi-tool so they could fix their bike.  The third time, since I was clearly lost, they gave me directions to Afton State Park, directly south of where we were, and on the way to the Elroy-Sparta trail.

After another hour or two of biking, I arrived at Afton State Park around 7, only to find that the campground was full.  "No problem", I thought.  "I'll just camp somewhere hidden over there in the Afton Alps Ski resort.  They don't use those things in the summer anyway, right?"  I could never have expected what would happen that night....