August Trip, day 2

Friday, August 14, 2009.

A beautiful sunny morning. Breakfast of french toast and bacon.
Bike side scripture: Psalm 138.

County C north to WI70 east to County CC north to County B east to County S north (best road of the day) to WI77 east (all road construction) County M west, County D north, US63 north to county B&C east to WI13 north to Ashland on Lake Superior. All the "alphabet" roads were great. Nice weather, nice scenery, nice twisty roads.

We found a city park in Ashland on the lake which was a cool relief from the 88degree heat of the day we had gotten up to. We ended up eating at Arby's after Lloyd's GPS sent us to a hardware store where a restaurant was suppose to be.

After lunch we headed up to Bayfield on US2 and WI13. We got into the town just in time to buy a ticket for the ferry crossing. It was a short wait dock side until we were able to motor up onto the boat for the ride across to Madeline Island.

Docked at LaPointe then headed up county H to the Town Park Campground. Larry's son, Jamie, had saved two sites for us, 27 & 30. The rest of the campground was totally full. Site 27 was small and rocky with barely enough flat land for a small tent. Site 30, however, was large so 5 of us went unto that site and we left 27 vacant. Larry and Lloyd went to stay at Jamie's place. Shaun decide to go visit his father in Bemidji so got back on the ferry and headed back across the bay.

After a walk to the beach and a swim, we all met at "Grandpa Tonies" for pizza and ice cream. After supper we headed back to the campground and started a campfire. We met a lone biker named Ed who had no place to spend the night. We invited Ed to join us at our large site since we still had room. Ed was from the Lacrosse area and seemed to spend a lot of time on his bike since was just back from Sturgis.

We had a nice evening around the campfire. It was hard to sleep, though, because of a loud party nearby in the campground.

August 2009 Trip day 1

Thursday August 13, 2009.

We meet at the Mill's Fleet Farm parking lot in Blaine, MN @ 5:30 PM. The plan is to head up to Wayne's huntin' shack in NW Wisc, hopefully before dark.

We were eight Fossils strong: Wayne, Greg, Lloyd, Larry, Jim, Bill, Keith and Shaun. The weather was somewhat hot with threatening storms in the SE. Fortunately we were heading NE and stayed dry though we saw a rainbow at St Croix Falls, WI.

From the northern metro we took county 23 north to MN 97 west to MN 95 north and east across the river to Osceola WI. WI 35 north to St Croix Falls then US hwy 8 east to Turtle Falls for gas and DQ.

The stop at DQ took us up to 8:00 Pm which meant our hope of not riding in deer country after dark would not be realized. Not a pleasant anticipation. From Turtle Lake we headed north on US63 to Cumberland and then WI48 east to Rice Lake, US 53 north to Haugen, then county V east to WI48 north to County C north.

It was dark by the time we got to Birchwood and we still had a dozen miles to go through deer country. I (Wayne) was leading and seeing deer occasionally. Honking my horn at them would turn them and they'd run back into the woods. So good so far... until on County C almost to my place a deer appeared from my left and began running along side of me as I braked. He then cut in front of me and I thought for sure I was going to hit him and probably go down. I did hit him but amazingly and thankfully was able to keep control of my bike. Greg told me the deer somersaulted head over tail more than a few times before running into the woods.

My front tire had clipped his rear leg. At impact I had instictively pushed my left foot down which seemed to have hlep stabilize the bike (but hurt like crazy). I would have been under 30 MPH by then. I put the bike in neutral and rolled along as I tried to assimilate all that just happened and verify that all was right with me and my bike. Realizing that all was well, I put it back in gear and kept going the last couple of miles to my hunting shack. I pulled up the hill to my walkway and was still so shaken I dropped the bike on it's side! But, we got our gear off and picked our respective beds.

Bible study this evening was about Paul on an island. Acts 13.