Day 28 Battle Lake to Long Prairie

Day 27 (30 Aug 09) Fargo, ND to Battle Lake, MN100 miles

46 degrees F and leaving Fargo, ND. Last night at the HoDo Restaurant our waitress, who is from Brentwood, CA, tells us of winter customers who leave their cars running while dining at the HoDo. Running because it gets down to -25F. She said she stays indoors during the winter and can’t wait to get back to CA.

People leave their cars running even while they fill up on gas to keep the car warm. 46 F is a warm summer morning for Fargo. We are wearing our jackets, but the locals appear in shorts and tee-shirts or no shirt at all.

Downtown is surrounded by railroad tracks on 2 sides, the Red River of the North on the east side and endless shopping malls on the west side. Early Sunday morning we ride past the malls. As soon as we turn east and cross the river we are into MN farm land. Rich black dirt and ground fog are all around us.

As we climb out of the Red River Valley it is obvious that we have left the prairie. A dramatic shift to rolling hills, endless lakes, hardwood trees, and green, green everywhere. Frogs are the road kill of the day. More corn and soybeans.

This must be the place where the long green lawn was invented. It appears that everyone got the memo to have a neat lawn carefully mowed. Neat as a pin farm houses along the way. Signs don’t tell us about the next town, but point us to the next Lutheran Church.

We do a bit of climbing and fighting the wind and feel the 100 miles in our legs.

Battle Lake is a small resort town with limited lodging (we picked the lesser of the two - with no reviews how would we know) a small grocery store and several restaurants including Stella’s where we ate. Stella’s does a booming business during the summer and is closed all of January and February. All of the staff are interested in our bike trip and quite surprised when we tell them we rode from Fargo that day. Guess the day off in Fargo didn’t help - probably would have felt better if we’d done the ride on Saturday without “benefit” of rest. On the other hand, Fargo was fun and worth the brief time we spent there.

Day 28 (31 Aug 09) Battle Lake to Long Prairie 64 miles

We awoke to another flat tire, this time on Jim’s bike. Among the things in our various packages received at the Radisson in Fargo was a Slime tube in Jim’s tire size. For those of you who don’t know, Slime is a product that can be put inside a bicycle tire tube and is said to instantly seal any hole up to one eighth inch in diameter. You can buy tires pre-Slimed or add the Slime yourself. Hopefully, the next bike shop will carry Slime in the form that allows you to add it to a non-Slimed tube. We’re both tired of mucking with tires and tubes.

We got a bit of a late start out of Battle Lake and began the ride with a moderate (8 - 15 mph) south wind. Unfortunately, we went south almost as much as east, not unlike the previous day. Wind breaks help but the terrain is a mixture of open farmland and small hills; a lot of up and down (it always seems like more of the trip is up) and when open, subject to unfavorable wind. Once again we cross the Hudson Bay/Mississippi River divide.

The high point of the ride is Inspiration Peak, a 1600 foot mound topped by hardwood trees. Not sure how inspiring it is, but things like this are relative. We pass lots of small farms, but the scenery is not as reminiscent of the Sierra Foothills in spring as yesterday. We stop in Parker’s Prairie for late morning snack/lunch and chat with the ladies at the check out stand in Sammy’s Store and gas station. They wish us well and we ride on to Long Prairie. Shortly out of Parker’s Prairie, a farmer driving a tractor pulling a wagon passes us. He’s going a little faster than we are so we decide to do a little drafting. He pulls us 6 miles at 18 - 19 mph, a great boost, we head south the entire time we are behind him and avoid some of the worst of the wind. Posted on the back of the wagon is a weathered bumper sticker reading “Have you hugged your hog today?” The sticker is from the Iowa Hog Shed Restaurant.

It is a relatively short day, but we need the rest after yesterday’s challenging 100 mile ride. In Long Prairie we have time to do laundry, a little grocery shopping and blog catch-up.