Seg #33 Tunnel Hill State Trail Illinosis Continued

Seg #10/33 Cont’d Tunnel Hill Trl Muddy-Karnak,Il: N Half 10/26/12; S half 10/28-29/2013

End	Karnak, IL	N37.29581 W88.708763	N-S miles 34.2
Start	Muddy, IL	N 37.78705 W88.500538	Trl lgth48.7mi Ride56.2mi

Ride hr 5:19

AVS 9.8

MXS  mph 14

DST 56.2

T 46-55

Kcal 4100

Linda (L) Connie's super friend they were
the first Med Tech graduates  of U of Iowa

Last year at this same time (late October), I ran out of ATP aka as physologic energy and wasn’t able to complete the Tunnel Hill Trail from Stonefort to Karnak. So this year, like last year, after dropping Connie off at her friend Linda’s house in Petersburg, Illinois, I headed south for an additional two hundred forty miles, to ride the southern half of one the nicer trails in the Midwest---the Tunnel Hill Trail. This trail is nearly in Kentucky so getting to tunnel adds quite a few miles on the car. I am guessing this season I have driven somewhere around eight thousand miles to ride trails in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Nebraska, Illinois, Arkansas, and Kansas.

Since it was such a jaunt to get to the Tunnel Hill Trail, I decided I would start riding at the tunnel itself while the weather was clear and it was getting late in the afternoon. In addition, rain was forecast for the second riding day so pictures on the trail were best taken the first day. There is a little town named Tunnel Hill, IL with a nice trail head near the tunnel. This is where I first began my Tunnel Hill Trail travels for 2013. Trail literature and guide books advise bike riders to tote a flashlight when going through the tunnel. Although I had a headlight, it was not needed since the tunnel was only 543 feet long. I did however follow the advice of not peddling through the tunnel. One can become disorientated with the tunnel walls whizzing past and end-up in a skinned-up heap. At times I have become a little dizzy riding past trestle fencing on a long bridge but nothing as treacherous as driving at night through a construction site lined with reflectorized safety barrels. The strobe-effect of safety barrels causes me big time wooziness, especially with a huge truck aiming bright lights at my tail feathers.  

 

Maze brothers Chris(L) Geoff(R) before entering
the Silver Comet Trail tunnel  4_1_12.
 lights illuminate this longer tunnel

Tunnel Hill Tunnel approach looks similar to
to the 300 ft longer Brushy Mt. tunnel above

The entrance to the tunnel the trail is named after (Tunnel Hill State Trail) looks much like the Brushy Mountain Tunnel entrance on the Silver Comet Trail (segment #1), only the Silver Comet tunnel is longer (800 feet) and is lit day and night. I did ride too fast through the Brushy Mountain Tunnel and nearly lost control. So when riding into to the tunnel, I slowed down and eventually walked the bike.

After the tunnel I rode south for over two miles and then back through the tunnel and to the trail head. I had a couple more hours of light, so I rode north to Burnside and back. That amounted to nearly eighteen miles of riding and eight miles of latitude for the first day. Some Good Samaritan left me a million dollar bill on my car window while I was riding to Burnside. Too bad it wasn’t realL. Burnside was a Union Army officer who greatest claim to fame was having the facial growth, Side Burns, named after him. I then drove to Vienna (pronounced Vigh en a) and got a crash pad in the only motel in town. After a hearty Egg McMuffin breakfast, I rode to Vienna trail head and headed north to overlap my ride from the previous day and to eventually ride to the south end of the trail at Karnak, IL. I needed my rain gear three hours of the second day. It didn’t rain hard enough to soften the trail like it did when I rode the north half of the trail the previous year (see post Seg #10). It feels good to have nearly all the northern latitudes completed. Two more trails and I will have the upper half of the trails only traverse of America completed. J



Prince Charles :-) Actually there were six of
these goats in a pen next to the trail. I could
not resist the opportunity to snap a picture.
By the way Prince Charles is a goat!

Princess Diana's wedding dress
24 ft train

On the way back home, we became aware of Princess Diana dress exhibit at the Putman Museum in Davenport Iowa. Since it was on our the way home and I was tired from driving in the rain. Diana, A Celebration is an exhibition that includes 150 objects, ranging from Princess Diana's royal wedding gown and 28 of her designer dresses to family heirlooms, personal mementos, paintings and rare home movies and photographs. I was struck by the 24 foot wedding gown train, the lack of wear on the heal of her wedding shoes and the hundreds if not thousands of bound volumes convalescences. It was quite moving to hear Elton John singing in the background Candle in the Wind.

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. 

Seg #31 Paul Bunyan Trail; S of Brainerd-Bemidji, MN 10/11-12/13

 

Start	S of Brainerd, MN			46.32485,-94.20749		NS miles 79.6
End	Bemidji, MN			47.48771,-94.87906		Trl lgth 112 Ride 109 miles
Ride 10:16 hr		AVS 10.4	MXS 18.5 mph		DST 109		T 68/46	Kcal 8087

 After driving to Brainerd the previous night and crashing at the American Best Value Inn, I got up, ate a hearty breakfast and then rode three miles north from the motel north to assure I would have overlapping latitude with the Willard Munger Trail at Willow River. In the process, I located Micki’s Pizza and Subs where the Jefferson Bus Line unloaded. Lucky me the Brainerd Public Library was directly across the street.  I locked the Trek to the rack at the library and used a smaller chain lock to fix my seat and rear luggage rack. Both of these items have quick release devices that can tempt someone to heist them. Locking the seat gave me solace that I would have something to sit on while pumping up the 100+ mile Paul Bunyan Trail.

By 8:30 a.m. I was on the road to Bemidji to leave my car and take the bus back to Brainerd. I had purchased my ticket online so all I had to do was locate the John Glass Fieldhouse at Bemidji State University for an 11:15 a.m. bus pick-up. The bus ride was straight forward other than a major traffic jam due to road construction.  As I looked out the window, I could see darkening of the western skies. “Hurry up bus---I don’t want to ride in the rain”, I said to myself. 

The bus got into Brainerd forty-five minutes behind schedule. I went straight to the library and asked a likely looking bicycle rider how I could find the Paul Bunyan Trailhead,. It is worthy of note that I purposely avoided asking the grey haired seventy something librarian that question. After stammering around a bit, the guy I thought would know was beginning to worry me. “Another Cush’s Theorem causality in the making “, I thought.  He finally said, “Maybe you ought to ask that lady”.

PBT trailhead that the librarian lady directed me
to find with precisions. It started raining shortly
after departing from Brainerd. Note raingear :-)

Again I thought, Not the seventy something lady surely?”  The seventy something lady overheard us and started drawing me a map. She put an “X” on the map and drew in streets and paths as accurately as a National Geographic cartographer. She was “spot on”. Now I need to retract my bias toward old ladies as a source of directions. Cush’s Theorem run amuck.

I got on the trail about three o’clock and was into the ride about forty-five minutes when the dreariness’ set in.

At Misswa the rain stopped for a few minutes
so I just had to take this picture that reminded
me of Shamus (see previous post)

It was drizzling and getting colder. It was sixty eight degrees at noon but that changed. From my back pack, I dug out my rain suit and wore it the rest of the way to Pine River. I had reserved a motel in Pine River so I had a warm place to unload my soggy clothes. The rain wasn’t as big a deal as it was sweat---non-breathing raingear is not the best option.  GoreTex is the material of choice to keep dry. I turned up the head and laid everything out to dry. By the time I got back from a steak at nearby restaurant, the wet stuff was dry. I love the way bike clothes dry.

I was up with the birds and ready to hit the trail by 7 a.m. It was a bit dark when I took off on the trail and the same drizzle that prevailed the day before was hanging around. So it rained the whole day---seventy miles of Yuk. Thank goodness the wind was out of the southeast and it pushed me northward toward Bemidji. Many areas I passed would have been absolutely stunning with the sun’s help, but I pretty much passed through the surroundings with limited gratification. There were some hilly, walked my bike, terrain around Walker, Minnesota; otherwise it was a flat former railroad right away trail.

The Paul Bunyan Trail region is rich in history, having been inhabited for centuries before French explorers came to the area. The Ojibwe and Dakota were present in the area until explorers entered the region and the logging and railroad industry took over. The Paul Bunyan State Trail follows an abandoned railroad corridor built in 1893 and last owned by Burlington Northern. The corridor passes through Boreal forests, along with more than twenty lakes and ten rivers/streams.

After lunch at the Happy Moose Bar and Grill in Walker, I headed out toward Bemidji. The wind then changed to northwest to test my stamina. Because of the rain, I didn’t bring my Ipod so the last thirty miles were a long thirty miles. The signage in Bemidji could have been better in that I went right through downtown Bemidji and past Bemidji State University without realizing it. To add insult to injury, when the paved trail ended, it joined a primitive trail that did not look bicycle friendly. And it wasn’t, After fighting a rugged soft trail for two or three miles, I decided I must be on the wrong trail and it was time to turn around. Luckily I stopped a car and asked, “which way to Bemidji?”. Although the guy looked like a Harley Biker, obese, long scraggly hair, tons of tattoos and generally curmudgeon like fellow, he did give me the correct directions. The second case of Cush’s Theorem run amuck. I got to the car by six o’clock and headed out of town shortly thereafter. The goal was to complete one more trail, the Gandy Dancer in St. Croix Falls Wisconsin,  I figured I could drive another three hours before  before heading back to Iowa. I gave GPS Trixie full control and followed her savvy directions toward St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.   One hundred sixty miles later, Trixie had me in Milaca, Minnesota, sixty-five miles from St. Croix Falls.

Seg #30 Willard Munger Trail; Hinckley-N of Willow River, MN 10/10/13

Start	S of Hinckely, MN			46.00384,-92.9506		NS miles 21.4
End	N of Willow RiverMN			46.32555,-92.82343		Trl lgth 22.7 Ride 22.5 miles
Ride 1:54 hr		AVS 11.8	MXS 21.5 mph		DST 22.5		Temp 73	Kcal 1744

 The Willard Munger Trail is one of the top ten paved bicycle trails in the country. The trail is named after a Minnesota state legislator who devoted his legislative career of 43 years to trail development and environmental protection.  It came to fruition in the 1980’s when the state of Minnesota was deeded the St. Paul-Duluth Railroad right- of- way. In 1989 the Willard Munger Trail opened as the longest paved recreational trail in America. 

Self portrait with aspen and birch contrasting
beautifully with the ruby red maples and sumac

Straight away I drove  to the Munger trailhead in Hinckley from Rochester in two and a half hours, keeping me on schedule to start riding north by 3 p.m. The fall colors were splendid all over Minnesota but absolutely spectacular on the trail. Hitting the peak of fall foliage is a rare experience for me, so one might guess how trilled I was to have a sunny seventy-three degree, wind at my back ride. I was able to make good time despite several picture stops. In planning this ride, I was able to arrange a cab from Willow River back to Hinckley. 


I rode a mile further north of this trail sign to overlap latitude
with the Paul Bunyon Trail in Brainerd

My Attaboy driver was quite a character.

The cab service was uniquely named Attaboys’ as in “That a Boy”.  The owner Patty Atterbury made certain the driver was on time; meeting me at Willow River at 5:30 p.m. Driver Dan was an interesting fellow, communicating with a Norwegian flare to his enunciation. We both agreed flying is for the birds. Dan said he had been involved in two plane crashes and will never fly again. I don’t blame him for his aerophobia. He drove like a bat out of hell and he got me back to my car before dark. He was adament about the fastest route to Brainerd, my next stop. "Go up I-35 and turn left on MN 210", he confidently told me.  That meant I would be to heading northeast to catch highway 210 to go back southeast. Granted Interstate 35 is the fastest way to travel north and Minnesota 210 has stretches of four lane road similar to an interstate, but goodness Dan, I went sixty miles farther and took another more than an hour longer compared to a southern route GPS Trixie drew up for me. I should have checked the map but I trusted Dan's information. Oh well, another example of Cush’s Theorem: No matter whom you ask, the information gathered will be generally misleading with significant details excluded. How nice it would have been to get another hour of sleep. So I just counted my blessings of having spent most of the day in heaven’s peak color environment, my spirits were lifted. Boom! I was asleep.

Is this heaven? No its Iowa! Just kidding it's Minnesota on the Munger trail at fall's peak!