Day 39: Welcome to Wisconsin

Seven states down, seven-ish to go!

A Roller Coaster Day

I had breakfast with Bill and Michelle this morning in a foggy campground, then we parted ways. Them headed east and me continuing on west.

This morning started with a big hill out of Crystal Falls. I saw it looming in the distance when I turned into the campground last night, so I knew it was coming. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. It was far from the only hill today - there were lots of rollers and climbers throughout the day.

I really didn’t expect to find a coffee stop this morning based on what I knew of the towns ahead. I was pleasantly surprised when I stumble on the Village Lighthouse in Alpha. I wandered in and everyone was in kind of a circle chatting and I thought I was intruding in on an event, but aparrenyly everyone was just catching up and this is the local gathering spot. I grabbed a coffee and a slice of strawberry coffee cake (so good!) and joined the circle.

Later on in Caspian, I restocked on postcard stamps and got my last Michigan post cards postmarked in Michigan, which is very important.

I headed onwards through the hills, chugging away to Wisconsin. I emerged from a back road to an intersection with a highway, but it was the wrong highway 😱. The route had turned about six miles back and I had continued straight (there was no turn on the cue sheet to defend myself). Not only was I six miles off route, I was back east on a highway I’d been on miles before. And it was a hilly six miles through a ski resort 🤦. As I was realizing how big of a problem this was, a couple of pick up trucks pulled up in both directions and greeted each other. I flagged down the one headed up where I’d come from and asked if he could help me out and explained the predicament. Dale saved my butt. He not only went miles out of his way to take me back to where I missed my turn, but a little further down the route (I think he wanted to make sure I didn’t mess up any other turns on the windy road…). Even with hitchhiking, I still added an extra five miles and few hundred feet of climbing to my day. Oh well.

After all that, I finally made it to Wisconsin! I rode through national and state forest on quiet back roads all afternoon. It was beautiful. Lush forest floors of grass and ferns and lots of birch trees.

I took a snack break towards the end of the day and got some cheese curds and a mini beer to celebrate being in Wisconsin 🎉. However, that is not enough carbs. I started to hit a wall five miles later so took another side of the road snack break. That got me over the hump and I got a second wind to make it the remaining twenty miles to the campground.