The Dakotas – Day 16 La Crosse

88 miles, 1521′ of climbing (772.3 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

Yes, you read that correctly: 88 long miles. Mostly on rail trails, over 1 hill, and through two tunnels. Tired legs, sore butts, and short tempers. Ended up at a brewery, after a quick beer at another bar that let’s just say, wasn’t 5 star. We got to our Warmshowers host, Arial, around 8:30.

But before all that fun, we had a good, early, start with breakfast in the hotel, and only about a mile to cover to get to the trail. The trail itself was a nice hard-packed surface (stone/sand/dirt) and dry considering the rains of yesterday. Trails are great, but they do get monotonous after a while and Dana wanted to get on the highway that paralleled the trail. At least for a while. The trail had three tunnels, and when the first was coming up, I caught up to Dana on the road and pointed out that the trail was to our left and there was a big hill coming up.

We backtracked to the trail crossing, only to find it was 30′ up. Would have been a couple of miles back to where we could get on it, so up the hill it was, and I was grumbling all the way. Until we reached the top and on the straightaway downhill, I hit my top touring speed ever of 51.5mph.

Lunch was in Wilton, WI where we ate at a gazebo, grabbed a couple of cokes at the local grocery store/souvenir shop (the proprietor had to turn the lights on for us). After lunch, we wandered over to Hardware Hanks and had a chat with the owner — who had been in the business for 52 years. We didn’t need any of his hardware, but did buy an ice cream sandwich.

After that, a couple of sketchy tunnels (first one people blocking the path too scared to go in and screaming when we passed, second one empty, but very wet and variable footing (we walked through). Good thing we had lights!

And then the last slog to the end of the rail trail and managing our way through La Crosse and the above mentioned bar visits. Arial was the only host to accept our request and though things were a bit askew at the house as her partner is in Ukraine building houses, we did have a restful night for our push tomorrow to the Hanlon’s in Plainview, MN.