Day Thirty Three - Back On The Road Again!

If you followed the Blog to date you know that for the last five days, we've been attending the BMW MOA National Rally in Minnesota. We got our bikes serviced (oil changes and tires) and then helped stimulate the economy by buying gear from the on-site vendors. We walked a LOT, we gawked a lot and by this morning, we were READY to get back on the road.

Day 33 Track

We were so itching to get on the road that we skipped breakfast at the hotel, and since we had mostly packed up yesterday, we were able to get a flying start at 6:38 AM! We headed straight to downtown Minneapolis and at 7:00 AM we snagged our first of seven waypoints today - The Minnesota Twins Target Stadium for the Baseball tour.

Baseball Tour - Minnesota Twins Target Field

It was my turn to lead today and it was a good thing since Larrys GPS was giving him fits again. I got us in and out of town clean and was glad it was a Sunday morning so the traffic was minimal. I should mention that the temps this morning were 68 when we left the hotel and I didn't put any extra layers on. It was also heavily overcast though so it felt cooler than the thermometer said. From here we headed west on I-394 and then caught US 169 southbound.We took that for a short hop to get onto US 212 which we took to get us down to Chaska for our 2nd waypoint of the day - this one for the IBEW Tour.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Chaska

We decided to stop at a McDonalds for a coffee break and to give Larry a chance to try to resurrect his GPS. We took a 30 minute break here and Larry cleared, rebooted and re-loaded his GPS, but even after all that it was still not right. We forged on, now southbound out of Chaska on some named roads that would turn into Hwy 13 after we got through New Prague. Somewhere along 13 I saw gas priced at 3.27 a gallon and that was all the excuse I needed to pull in for gas AND don my rain jacket to cut the wind as it hadn't warmed up at all yet. Further on south on 13 at 9:08 AM we would get our third waypoint for the day - Waterville for the IBEW tour.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Waterville

From here we continued south on 13 until we turned east onto US-14 just south of Waseka. It would be a 51 mile leg east on 14 until we turned south onto US-52.

Presidential Tour - Fillmore County

Soon after that we would catch I-90 for a 32 mile leg over to Hwy 43. When we got off the exit there was an ominous sign stating that 43 was closed some several miles ahead, but we needed to get to the town of Rushmore and it said the business district was open so we headed down 43 in spite of the detour warning. Just after that turn we would find our 4th waypoint for the day - the Fillmore County line for the Presidential Tour. It's now 11:20 AM and as you can see I am still wearing my rain jacket - because it still hasn't broken the 70 degree mark yet! Just a half mile from the Rushford post office, we got to the detour. It wasn't very clear, but we really had no choice but to follow it and hope for the best. The detour routed us around through some neighborhood streets and into the town of Rushford. I had the waypoint showing on the GPS but every turn we wanted to make to get to it was a closed road. We looped around through town a few times and finally from one of the blocked roads we saw the post office - located behind a gas station that we had almost ridden up to before so we looped back again and finally got our prize - the Rushford Post Office - the "r" in Strange for the Team Strange Tour. It was getting on towards lunch time and we considered stopping right here as there was a Subway right next to the post office, but Larry's paper map showed the town of Lanesboro, which was just another 15 miles further might have more choices so we got onto Hwy 16 and headed southwest for Lanesboro. 16 turned out to be a moderately twisty road as it followed alongside the Root River and it made the miles go by a little quicker.But, as we pulled into Lanesboro we got thrown yet another detour!. We did find a place here for lunch and I made the mistake of ordering a personal pizza which took forever because there were about 4 others ahead of me... That did give Larry plenty of time to eat his sandwich and then fiddle some more with his GPS. He did finally figure out that if he ran it without the XM antenna plugged in (and thus without XM radio AND the XM weather radar) it would at least now display maps and route well so that worked out better for the rest of the day.When we left Lanesboro, the detour for Hwy 16 would take us up along the northern side of the South Branch of the Root River before reconnecting us to 16 near Preston where we would turn onto US-52. 52 would take us across the border into Iowa.

We would catch Hwy 9 at Decorah IA and then 76 near Waukon and that would take us over to the Mississippi River. Here we would run a 22 mile stretch of the Great River Road along the west side of he Mississippi. After we split away from the river we had just 17 miles to get us down to Dyersville for our 5th waypoint of the day - The site of the filming of the Field of Dreams Movie - this is a bonus point for the Baseball tour.

Field of Dreams site for the Baseball Tour

I took this shot of the actual field - and note the dark skies...

Beautiful field - and ominous skies

As we were mounting up here we caught a few drops of rain so we hurried along. We were about a hundred miles away from our planned end of the day but it would be highway speeds and directly into the rather stiff wind (which we had for the entire day!) so I decided to gas up so we wouldn't be worried about making it on the now low tank. The sky was still dark. After the fuel, it was a hard slog westbound on US-20 at a speed limit of 65 MPH and dead into a 20+ MPH headwind. Well, maybe I pressed it closer to 70 because I wanted to get in for the night. We cleared the dark skies for a bit only to get under yet another dark threatening cloud again. I looked like it could rain at any minute several ties today, yet Larry's incredible charm worked yet again and we stayed dry! We got over to Waterloo where we snagged our final point for the day - the Waterloo Post Office - for the IBEW Tour.

I've Been Everywhere Man - Waterloo

We got to our hotel in Cedar Falls just 7 miles later and were happy to have had such a productive day.

Today's Stats: 438 miles in 11:51 elapsed time, and since I didn't zero my GPS before the start I can't say exactly what our running time was...