Dave takes a trip through northern Wisconsin.
I used to go on bike tours throughout Wisconsin. They have the
county road system for bicycling. Small two lane roads that go
everywhere and generally have very little traffic. Mostly little
farm roads through the countryside. I remember stopping at a
dairy farm out in the middle of nowhere WI to get some water and
watching as they made cottage cheese or something that looked like
cottage cheese. I’ll try to find some of the old photos from
those trips. I posted a few a while back. I’ve got a couple of photos that look quite similar to a few of Dave’s shots.
On these trips we would stay at state or county parks. I’ll never
forget our night at Clam Lake in the Chequamegon National Forest, “Our Job is Making Memories.”.
We had a nice dinner cooked over our little folding stove, got
everything all cleaned up, pitched our tent, well it’s not really a
tent just a big sheet of blue tarp hung over a rope between two trees,
and were ready to sleep. Until the mosquitoes came. After a
few nanoseconds of those little critters buzzing in our ears we decided
to pack up and get back on the bikes. (I wonder if this attracts mosquitoes?) The mosquitoes didn’t seem
to bother us if we rode fast enough. It was amazing riding down
that little two lane road by the light of the moon. Until the
moon went down and then it was really, really dark. Riding by the
light of the stars wasn’t as much fun as the light of the moon.
The road was fairly straight, and downhill as it approaches Lake Superior thank God, so we could see cars coming from miles
away. We would pull off the side of the road and let them
pass. The noises somehow became much louder in the
darkenss. We could hear but not see all kinds of critters moving
in the brush along the sides of the road. We rode all night and
ended up in Ashland, WI.
Civilization at last! We went to try and get a room at the
nearest motel but there was no answer. We tried the Police
station but it seemed abandoned too. I think there was some sort
of festival going on and the whole town was there. We ended up
camped out in a parking lot somewhere.
I still have the bicycle I rode on those trips. I’ve been
cleaning it up lately as it had been hanging up in the garage and
hasn’t had much use in the last 10-15 years.