Morning musings:
Rain on the metal roof woke
me up in the middle of the night…real rain on a real metal roof this time. Not fake pine needle rain on the trailer masquerading as rain.😏 Fell back asleep
praying it would stop by morning. When I
woke at 8, I was a bit dismayed to hear what I thought was a gentle rain and my
thoughts were off to the races…Oh, man,
that means my goggles will get rain spots on ‘em and I won’t be able to see
good…maybe I can just wear my glasses and pull down the helmet shield so my
glasses won’t get spotted…wait, the shield is tinted, that might make it too
dark to see if the sky is dark… we might have to take it slower because I won’t
be able to see good…blah, blah, blah.
Then, I crawled out of bed and realized that it HAD stopped raining and
the noise I was hearing was simply the fan. Whew! But the sky is still looking like rain…
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Jackson has an Ace Hardware
so Kim is off to get some bolts or something.
He’s got one more little tweak he wants to make to the trailer. The hardware stores have generally been
closed when we get into a town at night so this was an opportunity he didn’t
want to pass up.
In the meantime while I’m
sitting at the cabin waiting for Kim to return, it starts raining again. Drat!!
**He returned dripping with water, saying he’d heard that it’s supposed
to be raining all the way to Green Bay.
Check the weather radar, stat! We
might be going with Plan B, whatever that is. 😐
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Yesterday as we cruised into
Pipestone, MN, I saw a big sign on the side of a building saying “Welcome to
Pipestone…Home of the Peace Pipe” with a picture of a huge peace pipe. I get on the radio “Hey, I think that means they have a peace pipe somewhere, let’s find
it!” Next block we see a sign for
the Pipestone Nat’l Monument with a peace pipe on the sign. “Hey, I think it’s this way because the sign
has pipe on it…maybe it’s out at the National Monument.” As we turn on the
road for the monument and start down the long drive back to it, I see a sign
that looks familiar. “Have we been here
before because that Three Maidens sign looks familiar?…but I don’t ever
remember seeing this particular monument so probably not.” Get to the Visitor’s Center which is
about to close but a pleasant ranger explains what pipestone is, where the
walking trail is, etc. Then Kim says,
“Well, we’re kind of pressed for time…we were looking for a peace pipe…is there
one of those here?” No, but the ranger
gave us directions to a large pipe on display just down the road. As we’re walking back to the bikes, I said to
Kim, “That ranger is probably thinking
‘Man, there’s all this natural beauty on display here and they just want to see
the dorky peace pipe?’” 😉 As we head
out of the driveway, Kim says “Didn’t we see rocks somewhere on a ride that
were called The Three Maidens?” We turn
right out of the driveway as directed and soon realize that, yes, we’ve been in
Pipestone before, we’ve seen those rocks and we’ve seen the big peace pipe…on
the HoneyRide back in 2011. I’m sure we
have a picture of the peace pipe from back then, but yeah, I took another one yesterday
just because….
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11 a.m. Morning update: Plan B
According to everything we’ve seen on
weather radar, Jackson is in the path of a band of rain moving through to the
Northeast…pretty much our entire route to the U.P. 😕 So we’ve decided to stay put for the night
and plan to get an early start on a fairly ambitious mileage day…all in an
effort to make up for the miles lost by spending a day off the road. If we accomplish that then Friday’s ride home
will be considerably shorter. We’ll see
how that goes…
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12 noon update: Plan C
There’s
been a break in the weather for about an hour now, so we’re making a break for
it. If we get 150 miles or so down the
road, it’s all good. Despite wanting to
stay off the interstate during this ride, the weather is dictating that we make
the best use of our time. Life doesn’t always go according to our plans and
there’s no shame in changing as needed.
So we’ll be riding I-90 for a bit.
Evening Update:
We left a couple of smiley rocks around
Jackson, MN, in honor of Deb’s childhood. 👍
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By 6 p.m. we were in a room in Wabasha,
MN, located on the banks of the Mississippi River. In Jackson, we were still about 715 miles
from home. If we’d stayed another night
we would’ve been hard pressed to make our goal of being home by Friday. Too many miles and not enough time. 😒 By going with Plan C, we are now less than
550 miles from Charlevoix and Friday is looking very doable.
When we decided on Plan C, it
was during a weather break…soon after we left, it started raining again. Ugh!! But we were prepared…extra layers for
warmth and rain gear to stay dry. We made almost 200 miles and estimate that only
about 50 of those miles were ridden without rain falling on us. For the first hour the rain was
intermittent…more off than on. About
2:30 it became more on than off. There
was lighter, dare I say, bluish sky toward the horizon and I kept thinking that
if we could just outrun the dark cloud we were under, than we’d be in better
weather. And every time it seemed that
we were just within reach of the lighter sky area, the road would turn/curve. Very disheartening but we pressed onward and
so did the rain. By the time we stopped
my face was tired of being stung by the raindrops. But despite all that, we both agreed that
leaving when we did was the right decision.
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Noticed the trailer latch wasn’t looking
right as we were rolling down the road. Turns out it was broken but could be easily
fixed with a stop at a hardware store.
Made a stop in Blue Earth where a hardware store was located across the
road from the 55 ft. Jolly Green Giant statue…so while Kim worked his magic replacing
the latch I went to take pictures of a big green man. 😏
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Trivia about Blue
Earth, MN, as found on a menu at the Hometown Restaurant:
**Blue Earth is named after the Blue Earth River, which was given the
Dakota name “Mahka-to” for the blue/black clay surrounding it.
**Blue Earth is the only Blue Earth in the whole United States!
**Claim to fame…Jolly Green giant Statue, which stands at 55.5 feet
tall
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Small Town of the Day: Kellogg, MN…population 456
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Wednesday miles: 195 miles
Total miles: 2,339 miles
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