Seg #32 Gandy Dancer Trail Danbury to St. Croix Falls, WI

Seg #32 Gandy Dancer Trail; Drury, WI - St. Croix Falls WI 10/13/13

Start	Danbury, WI			46.00861-92.36715		NS miles 42.3
End	St. Croix Falls WI			45.40039-92.6288		Trl lgth 48.7 Ridemi51.2
RideTm hr  5:56		AVS   8.5	MXS mph 18.2		DST  51.2		Temp 46-54	Kcal 4123

 The fourth and final ride for this trip was to drive from Milaca, MN, where I “crashed and burned" the night before, to St. Croix Falls, WI. While loading the car at the motel, I observed the windshield clouded with rain. Whoops!  This water would not wipe off. It was it was a layer of ice! I wish I had been running the car and heater while getting organized and loading the car. It took twenty minutes to defrost the windows before I could head off to St. Croix Falls.   Even though it was still thirty degrees at 7 a.m., it had stopped raining and the sun was exposing a cloud-free eastern sky---makings of a nice day. It took a little over an hour to get to St. Croix Falls.

Before I headed from home to the North Country, I attempted to arrange a cab to take me to the end of Gandy Dancer Trail. There was no way I was going to ride more than fifty miles after already riding 130 miles the previous two days. Either I would need to get lucky and find a cab or I was heading home, short of my goal. I called a cab that I had been turned down a few days before and as luck would have it, they changed their mind and hauled me Danbury. The driver was a hefty, tobacco chewing babe and her side-kick, an even heftier swashbuckler.  I wasn’t in conversational mode but I did my best to chime in to concept of how much better it would be if Mr. Hefty ran the football program at a local high school. As we lumbered along, I wondered if the van might lift off the road due to a hot air equivalent of ten behemoth balloons.

A good thing about the cab ride was I was getting a fifty mile ride that allowed me to complete my goal. I didn’t have the time or energy to ride fifty miles out and another fifty back so the cab ride was a must. Another advantage of the cab ride was spotting a majestic bird along the road. Just twenty miles up the highway, about forty feet off the road, I was lucky to get a mental photograph of a huge bald eagle foraging with a flock of turkey buzzards. Turkey buzzards are big birds, but up against an eagle, especially this eagle; these buzzards looked like sparrows competing with wild turkeys at my backyard bird feeder. If only I had seen the eagle soon enough to snap a picture---what an awesome picture that would have been.  The cab got me to Danbury around 10:30.





At Danbury,WI ready to head down the Gandy Dancer
Trial to my car after a cab ride from St. Croix Falls



I pulled my bike out of the SUV and jumped aboard in search of the trailhead. It was a bit nippy with temps in the mid forties. But, with "more often than not" sunshine, I had enough apparel to be comfortable and work-up a slight sweat.

There was a slight headwind that wasn’t an issue by virtue of the dense tree stands that lined the trail. This was the only crushed limestone trail of the four trails I rode on this outing. With fallen leaves up to a foot deep, there was more resistance to freewheeling than paved leafless trails I rode previous two days. The rustling sound radiating from the tires rolling through the leaves was welcome mesmerizing hum that nicely replaced an I-pod I often listen to while riding. Because it had rained most of the day before and more was predicted, I decided not to tote my I-pod along---and you know---I didn’t miss it! The trails’ name “Gandy Dancer” is derived from workmen of the former owner, the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad. In the 1880’s, crews building and maintaining the corridor, used tools manufactured by the Gandy Tool Company. As the workers used their tools they often chanted applying a unified mechanical and vocal cadence that mimicked a well rehearsed dance.

Starting in Danbury resulted in my riding south on the south half of the trail. The north half of the Gandy Dancer runs from Danbury to Duluth, Minnesota.  Like most early rail lines, towns are located along the tracks roughly every seven or eight miles. Back in the day, steam engines needed to reload coal and take on water every six to eight miles. It was well past lunch time when I reached the town of Siren some sixteen miles south of Danbury. I rode down Main Street hoping to find a place to get a soda and hamburger. A bar and grill with smokers hanging outside looked promising. So, I parked my bike and went inside. Wow! The place was packed with Packer fans, screaming and hollering to stadium decibel levels. My former Coralville neighbor, Joe Philbin; who was a line coach for the Iowa Hawkeyes and Packers and now is head coach of the Miami Dolphins; told me there is no way a “could care less” non-fan would be embraced in a Packer Bar on Sunday afternoon. After failing to find a waitress or place to sit, I decided Joe's wisdom pervailed. I was going to lose a lot of time hanging around Siren. So out the door I went, jumped on the Trek and headed on down the trail longing for a burger.  However, I did get a soda from a streetside vendening machine.

The village of Siren, WI on a Sunday afternoon

Some of the mossy areas on the Gandy Dancer
Never have seen this much. Careful its slippery

Because the leaves had a braking effect and parts of the trail were covered with a thick slippery moss, I didn’t make very good time due to these conditions. So as the sun was setting, I began to wonder if I would make it to the car in St. Croix Falls before dark. To compound the situation, I had left my helmet light in the car. When it got dark, I could only guess where the center of the trail was located. Just before I was going to leap off the bike and start walking, I broke through the darkness I found US Highway 8 giving me adequate light to negotiate the last three miles to the car. I hope I don’t pull another bone-head head lightless ride again. And just to add insult to injury, I somehow lost the spare electronic car key in the dark.  Oh well, what’s a couple hundred dollars to replace car key? Damn! I did learn however that I didn’t need a fancy two hundred key. For sixty bucks I got all I needed to unlock the car and start the engine in case I lost the fancy key.