Day 22, Monday, July 21.
Long Prairie, MN to Monticello, MN
Daily Mileage: 99.65 miles
Total Mileage: 2,105.8 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:59 hours
Average Speed: 14.2 mph
Maximum Speed: 26.5 mph
Today’s plan was to get within striking distance of our stop in Minneapolis. We wanted to get as close as possible, camp, get a good night’s sleep, and then wake up at 4AM to ride Highway 10 right through Minneapolis; however, much to our disappointment, we found out as we began to ascend the ramp onto Highway 10 that bikes were prohibited. Also, in the process of trying to find Highway 10, we discovered that people aren’t really familiar with the names of the country roads in their own neighborhood and that AAA does some screwy things on their maps with roads that aren’t main highways. After three weeks of using maps to guide us across the country, we could recognize when something wasn’t exactly “as advertised” on a map.
We pulled into Monticello at 8PM. After calling our friend to confirm pick-up from the West Coast and fill him in on the past three weeks, we ate a nice dinner at Wendy’s (looking back we both didn’t eat meat at this point, so I’m not exactly sure what we ate). We had spent about forty-five minutes on the phone at the Super America and now were headed back for campsite directions. It started to pour as we sat outside of the store resting. We took this time to plan our route through the city, waiting for the rain to let up a bit so that we could make it to the park to sleep.
(Photo: Tim standing next to the first Mississippi River sign. We were surprised to run into the river this soon and more surprise that it was so small.)
Daily Mileage: 99.65 miles
Total Mileage: 2,105.8 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6:59 hours
Average Speed: 14.2 mph
Maximum Speed: 26.5 mph
Today’s plan was to get within striking distance of our stop in Minneapolis. We wanted to get as close as possible, camp, get a good night’s sleep, and then wake up at 4AM to ride Highway 10 right through Minneapolis; however, much to our disappointment, we found out as we began to ascend the ramp onto Highway 10 that bikes were prohibited. Also, in the process of trying to find Highway 10, we discovered that people aren’t really familiar with the names of the country roads in their own neighborhood and that AAA does some screwy things on their maps with roads that aren’t main highways. After three weeks of using maps to guide us across the country, we could recognize when something wasn’t exactly “as advertised” on a map.
We pulled into Monticello at 8PM. After calling our friend to confirm pick-up from the West Coast and fill him in on the past three weeks, we ate a nice dinner at Wendy’s (looking back we both didn’t eat meat at this point, so I’m not exactly sure what we ate). We had spent about forty-five minutes on the phone at the Super America and now were headed back for campsite directions. It started to pour as we sat outside of the store resting. We took this time to plan our route through the city, waiting for the rain to let up a bit so that we could make it to the park to sleep.
(Photo: Tim standing next to the first Mississippi River sign. We were surprised to run into the river this soon and more surprise that it was so small.)
