Frogs. Deer alive and skeletal. Dead skunk and dead snake and dead porcupine. Waterfowl, songbirds, ravens etc. Huge bird of prey, molting? Too early? Mink or marten.
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| View of Pike Bay from our campsite |
These are the notes that I left myself after riding around 55 miles on Saturday. The ride kicked my butt. I know this because when I got back to our campsite, I ate beef jerky while enjoying this view. Beef jerky, you say? Odd but oddly delicious after that long bike ride.
So I started off just south of Cass Lake, took the Migizi trail west and then headed south on the Heartland Trail. Just before Walker, I picked up the Paul Bunyan trail and took it north. I debated taking it all the way to Bemidji, but common sense kicked in about 42 miles in to the ride. I was running low on snacks and water and had left my money, ID, and credit card at the campsite, I had no idea really how far of a ride it was from Bemidji back to the campground, and I was pretty tired. I took a county road from the Paul Bunyan trail back to the Heartland Trail and then back to our campsite. (If I had kept on going, I think it would have been a 70-75 mile ride.)
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| The Migizi Trail by the campground |
It was sort of a greyish, windy day. I saw no one on the Heartland Trail until I was by the Leech Lake boat landing just north of Walker. I saw a handful of cyclists on the (much prettier) Paul Bunyan Trail. Thank you, Minnesotans, for passing the Legacy Amendment a few years ago, which apparently paid for these two trails!
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| Debris on the Heartland Trail can't stop me! |
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| Heartland Trail |
I am not sure what is happening with my photo alignment, here. I am sorry that I'm such a novice blogger.
Anyhow, back to those animals. I heard a lot of frogs when on the trail. I saw a few living deer, and a few really cool deer skeletons that were largely in one piece, but very much picked over. I saw some dead things: a skunk, a snake, and a porcupine. I saw many birds, although the one that was most interesting was some sort of huge bird of prey that I couldn't identify. I also saw some sort of mink or marten or weasel hanging out in a field. Oh, yeah, and horses and cows. And lots of scat. Clearly some of it was from coyotes. I'm wondering, based on size, whether other pieces were from wolves. I assume there are wolves in that area.
The bike paths were so smooth and easy to ride on that, after a while, I started needing something to do, other than pedal and look at cool barns and lakes and cabins. I was singing, but the only lyrics I could remember in any sort of detail were from songs from the 1980s and early 1990s - - a lot of INXS and the Pixies, a little Peter Gabriel (I must've gotten my second wind when ending the Pixies with "T-I-R-E-D spells it," I launched in to Biko and the lyric quoted above about how you can't blow out a fire), and U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday as an encore. "There's been a lot of talk about this next song maybe, maybe too much talk." I don't think my singing killed those animals, but one cannot be sure.
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| Leech Lake |
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| Paul Bunyan Trail |
On Sunday, I decided to try to ride on county roads and see if I could make it to Bemidji, to do the final part of that initial loop I started on Saturday. I decided that I wouldn't go more than 40 miles, though, so that I wouldn't spend all day on my bike and so that I could give Dan a chance to go for a longer ride and take my turn hanging out with our dog, Piper, at our campsite. I stopped about 5-7 miles shy of Bemidji, not wanting to turn my 40-mile ride into a 50-55-mile ride. It was a nice ride, without too much traffic, and I got to talk to some funny boys who were on their way to the powwow in Cass Lake and were wanting me to protect them from a friendly dog that was following them.
I rigged up my headphones in to my helmet for this ride so I had a little bit of ambient music, but so that I wasn't wearing anything in my ears to block the sound of cars or anything around me. It worked pretty well. I was able to listen to music from this decade, which was a nice change of pace.
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| My helmet, wired. |
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| Break near the Leech Lake Reservation |
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| Dan's homemade oatmeal/banana/chocolate chip bars. Yum. |
It was good I limited myself to 40 miles. My legs felt able to do more, but my back was ready for a break, reminding me that I need to be better about stretching, especially when I'm doing the 5-day MN TRAM ride. Speaking of which, I'll have a special announcement here soon. Stay tuned!
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| Bonus shot: the goofy bobber-shaped water tower in Pequot Lakes on the drive home from camping. |
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