Southern MN bike trip day 2: 6/21/23

 Southern MN bike trip day 2: 6/21/23

Happy solstice! Celebrating it in the best way possible: being outside. Another good day of biking. We actually didn’t get to bed all that early last night after cleaning up dinner, and then we had a raccoon try to get into dad’s gorp, on top of in general me not sleeping as much, so we didn’t get rolling for breakfast until into the 8’s. Broke camp and headed back down to the river flats around 9:40 or so, not so early. 

The hill up was quite large, but it was quite a treat to head back down. A mile or more of cruising 20-30 miles an hour. Pretty quick, we found ourselves in Henderson. It’s still got a cool, old downtown and supposedly would have been a good 2nd option as a campground if we hadn’t stayed at the county park.

Henderson to Le Sueur was also fairly quick. It was a pretty rickety road on the river flats (probably too much flooding), followed by a crappy 3/4 mile stretch on 169, then over the bridge and up a steep hill into downtown Le Sueur. Not much there in terms of services for hungry/thirsty bikers. There was supposedly a coffee shop that was going to be open in 2022, but it looked still very much in the construction stages when we peeked in. We settled for some fig newtons and water before setting off down the Ottawa road. This one is also a gem. Gentle hills with great views of the river flats and intermittent prairie on the edges.

Rolled into St. Peter a little after noon and headed to our old stomping grounds of pattis for some lunch. It’s funny, even after 14 years, St. Peter still feels a bit like a homecoming. Probably always will.

Bike through town with a good dose of nostalgia and set off toward Mankato via the Kasota road. Even the local roads bring back good memories. Lots of time spent traversing just about all of them at some point during training runs.

Maybe an hour after we left St. Peter, we hooked into the Sakatah “Singing Hills” bike trail on the outskirts of Mankato. It was a bit of a grind up hill the first few miles to get back out of the river valley, but it was nicely shaded in a ravine and the surface was in great shape. It’s amazing how much Mankato has grown/sprawled over the last 15 years. It took quite a while before we truly have left all the sub-developments behind and were back into corn fields.

Did a pit-stop for some ice cream in Madison Lake at the “Lucky Lure” pizza place. Surprisingly good ice cream shakes and AC is always nice on a hot day. Continued on the trail into Waterville for some groceries at the small grocery store in town. Of all the towns we passed through, Waterville seemed to be in the roughest shape. Definitely has seen better days. 

From there, it was only a few more miles down the trail to get to the bike-in campsites at the state park. The office was closed, and you can’t pay for our sites online, so we were “stuck” not paying for now. Kind of a silly system when the park office closes at 4 PM. Probably not a lot of bike packers can beat that time. It was nice to get a shower in though and we ended up shifting over to the group campsite right across the trail and on the water.

Enjoyed another good dinner of “hobo dinners” over the fire to wrap up another solid day. Bugs are worse here. Not the worst I’ve ever had, but plenty bad and enough to chase one into the tent for an early bed. Ready for another good day of biking tomorrow!