102.1 miles, 4701′ of climbing (1022.9 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.
Enough resting! Back to the bikes! Another good, hearty breakfast at Eric’s & Wanda’s, some more last minute bike tasks, and we said goodbye to the Hanlons. Eric reviewed our route and saved us a second big climb on the way to Cannon Falls.
We made it the 67 miles to Cannon Falls in record time despite it being our largest climbing total of the trip. One bigger climb but a hundred small ones. The good thing about small climbs is that after you do the work, you get a break and generally a nice downgrade which was definitely the case today.
So, we’re sitting at the Cannon Falls Campground at 2:30 PM trying to decide if we wanted to stay there or use the daylight we had to get a little further. Getting a few more miles in would relieve some of the miles we had to do tomorrow for Dana to get to an appointment in Minneapolis (it’s a secret where she’s going, but it will be revealed in tomorrow’s blog).
On the way out of Cannon Falls, a nice guy named Dave pulled his car into his driveway then flagged us down. The road we were heading onto was blocked by construction, but he told us about a way around the blockage and thanked him and continued. A few minutes later he comes speeding up to us on his e-scooter to tell us his wife told him that the detour he gave us was now blocked. He led us through the construction and got us on track again. A road angel on a scooter.
Well, almost. Not 1/2 mile from where we left him there was another detour. We were watching the time closely because we were trying to get to Lebanon Hills Campground (35ish miles) by their closing time of 7 PM. We pushed pretty hard on the relatively flat route and made it with time to spare. And if you do the math, that was a full century we just rode. Mostly thanks to the great rest and hearty sustenance we got at the Hanlons. Thanks again Eric & Wanda.
