My friend Peg is a bona fide blogger (and now podcaster). She said, during a podcast episode, that she heard that people who aren't good blog writers use a lot of photos. I could do a better job writing, and have been mortified by the number of typos in some of my recent posts, but I think people of all ages like stories and words.
(Side conversation: HOLY COW are the planes really loud over our house tonight. I can barely hear myself talking to myself or to the dog. The rain that came through (and now is starting up again) must be part of a system requiring a flight path change. Wowza.)
Uhm, so, yes, yes, stories and words. Dan wanted to camp this weekend and I, having ridden on trails/roads out of the Mankato area during last year's Ride Across Minnesota, suggested Minneopa State Park. I knew there were some hills and I'm going to need to ride up hills in California, so it seemed like a place to revisit.
We camped at Minneopa once before - almost exactly 13 years ago. The camping was good, but it was an ill-fated trip. The short, less traumatic version of the story is that it was on that trip that we learned our former dog, objectively considered The Best Dog in The World by all, was dying. So, I had mixed feelings about the weekend with all of that baggage.
Now, we are older and we have a camper. And, our current dog is an old girl, too. Her arthritic self was very happy to share our bed, but she was a trooper on our little hikes.
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| That green piece of artificial turf has no cushion. But while we set things up, she needed to keep an eye on the car to make sure we didn't leave her. |
We lucked out with our campsite. We were tucked in a corner so people going by couldn't really see us, and no one was in the site next to ours. There was a lot of standing water and the river down the cliff from our screen house was still very high, but the bugs were really minimal. We could have lived without the screenhouse. But it was nice to eat our food in there without having to swat anything.
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| Site A14 |
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| I posted this on Facebook. The last of our beer from Belgium, enjoyed by the campfire on Friday night. Despite the lack of appropriate glassware, it still was delicious. |
Okay! So, where were we? It didn't rain Friday night as originally forecasted. We had a nice walk after dinner, down the bluff and through some muck to the receding recently-flooded Minnesota River which ran below our campsite. The river was beautiful. I didn't sleep very well Friday night because there was a really vocal owl! For hours it just kept hooting away.
Saturday morning, I got up, slammed some coffee and a light breakfast and began my ride. My destination: the pie shop at the Rapidan Dam. Dan was going to meet me there. The plan is that he'd eat breakfast while I rode and we'd have a piece of pie. He'd then drive me back to the campsite and then he would go for his bike ride.
On Friday, while driving to the park, I mapped out my route (thanks Gregg, for helping me re-create the route from last July!). I didn't have the ability to load it on my Garmin and don't have a phone mount for my bike, so I just was planning on looking at the map when I got to important turns. Well.... I have realized that I'm now of that age that I need my glasses to read tiny fonts. It was hard to see what to do when I got to the fork at about mile 5.5. A guy rode up and I told him I was going to the dam - - he said to go right. Technically, he gave me good advice. That park, circled in red, took me almost to the dam. But it wasn't the route I'd mapped and it didn't have the hills I wanted to ride. So, I backtracked and then did the route as mapped. I got to ride up some good, long hills. They weren't as hard as I remember them, but I needed to shift through many gears and they did get my heart rate up!
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| Side benefit of my incorrect detour: by backtracking and then doing my planned route, I got to ride 6 extra miles. 23 miles is a pretty short ride for me, but I still ate the pie - a la mode! |
So, if I had done this exact route 4.3 times, that would equal what I'll be doing in California - in terms of both distance and hills. I might need to go back for a long day trip, when I have no time constraints, and find some other hills to draw out this route a bit.
I read and Piper napped - undisturbed by bugs - in the screen house while Dan rode. The three of us then went for a decent walk - along the bison range - to a historic windmill. Afterwards we had a rather satisfying dinner of bison, ironically, with potatoes and veggies. My vegan friends will be sad about that. I don't eat much meat, and then it is local stuff from small farms and rather infrequent. (I know, I know, this is still not environmentally ideal, but it is a good compromise when you're married to the son of a butcher.)
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| We forgot her bed, but being the glampers we are, we had a spare comforter. I think she will never go back to her regular bed. |
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| Our gourmet dinner. |
The owl wasn't as hoot-a-riffic on Saturday night, and there was some light rain providing some good sound effects. So the sleeping was good. We went to Minneopa Falls right away this morning, before anyone else was there.
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| Piper and I are on the edge of the falls. We're kind of hard to see. |
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| The full falls. The lower falls are much taller. |
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