Oct. 10

Today was the final ride of my trip! It was in a beautiful area of southeastern Minnesota near Winona. The ride was called Plowline Trail. I found it on trails.com. The only problem was that I took so many wrong turns, I don't know if I ever was on the right trail. Also it turned out to be a double track trail which wasn't very challenging technically, even though the guide said it was a technical level of 2-4 out of 1-5. Aerobically it was very challenging, especially with all the wrong turns I took. Up the hill, then down the other side, oops, wasn't supposed to go that way, back up the hill, then up and down various trails and turning around. There were two overlooks and I never found them. There were other intersecting trails that weren't shown on the trails.com map. I think it would have helped to include the intersecting trails. Oh well, it was a beautiful day, and a great 2 hour break from driving! Marilyn walked the trail and took the same wrong turn as me at first. It was good that I climbed back up most of the hill and met her before she went all the way down. Here's a picture of me after we met up the first time.

Here's a single-track trail that went down a steep hill. I was thinking maybe this led to an overlook but I never saw it. Climbing back up was a good challenge. One thing I'm pleased with is I seem to have a lot of endurance. I kind of feel like I could do this all day, but I'm sure that's not true. Sometime I'll have to see how long I can ride.

You can make out a river on this one, I think the Mississippi. You were supposed to get a great view from the overlooks...

The trail was never level and it was fun to go downhill fast since there weren't too many obstacles (roots, boulders). The first hill was challenging because of the rocks and slippery gravel. So I didn't go down real fast on that one at the end. It's fun to bounce along that terrain with the shocks on the bike. The shock absorbers are still a novelty for me.

This trip turned out to be a great, mostly free, mountain bike clinic for me. In 8 days, I rode 9 times! Okay, one of them probably shouldn't count since it was on pavement. So 8 times. What fun that turned out to be. Now I'm looking forward to trying out the local trails.