I understand that it was 104 in Dallas today and I hate to keep rubbing it in…but the high today for us was 70!!! It started out mostly cloudy and 66 in Walker, MN. It was mostly cloudy all day, but the sun did peek through from time to time. There were several showers around, but we only got sprinkled on a few times. We got lucky.
The drive through the middle of Minnesota was very nice. We hit the road at 8:00 and in about an hour, we crossed a river and the sign said “Mississippi River”. We made a u-turn and took some pictures. I knew that it started somewhere up north, but had no idea exactly where. When I got to the hotel tonight, I googled it and found out that it starts within a mile of where we took the picture at small Lake Itasca, Minnesota.
Headed on down to Duluth, MN and got our first glimpse of Lake Superior. It was just an inlet portion that was very industrial looking. Crossed over into Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We paralleled the lake from Duluth for the rest of the day. We took a little detour so that we could ride along the shore for about 13 miles. Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes. From Wikipedia, there is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South America with 1 foot of water assuming they were flat.
Enjoyed talking to the locals and hearing the dialects. Got to hear a “Bit nippy to be riding the bikes yaaa!” and a “You bet-chaa”. We met a man in Ironwood, Michigan that wanted to warn us that there was a helmet law in Michigan (we were wearing them anyway) and had a 20-30 minute discussion on the merits of cold weather versus the hot weather. He said that you can always put on a heavier coat (to a point until you look like the Stay puff Marsh mellow man and can’t shovel the average 300 inches of snow a year) and we can always take clothes off to a point (unless we want to be arrested for indecent exposure). We parted ways deciding that we will stay living were we each do.
You can also tell that we were not locals by what we were wearing. We had on all of our leather gear – chaps, long sleeve shirts, leather jackets with leather vests on top of that…and the locals were riding their bikes in short sleeve shirts, well not all of them but some!!!
It is supposed to get down to 56 degrees tonight and only reach 66 tomorrow. We will head east through Michigan, cross into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie on the way to Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Trip mileage - Today 414 - Total 1761
That's it for today.
John
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