Day 2: 6/23

 6/23

Well- it turns out that my sleeping pad (borrowed from Kate) had a slight leak in it, so even though camping isn’t the best sleep, camping without a pad is assuredly a step down. Got at least some, but woke up leaving something to be desired. 

      Ate a breakfast of coffee, bananas, granola, and yogurt before setting on our way bound for St. Cloud and beyond. Rolled into the Clearwater rest area around 9:30 to hit up their bakery- actually surprisingly good. It’s made the tribune taste section before. Not quite a Mojo Monkeys, but a step up from grocery store/gas station doughnuts for sure.

     We enjoyed a tailwind most of the morning and cruised the next 13 miles into St. Cloud as well. It’s cool coming into a big(ger) city again. You get the sense of traffic picking up, developments in the middle of nowhere, and the benefit of bike trails to guide you into town. The Beaver Island trail picks you up 5ish miles out of St. Cloud and plops you right on campus.

     Swung by a cool sports store right downtown so Greg could pick up some tubes and I could replace my air pad. We had a few iterations of routes (Krewe was unfortunately close this week) before settling on grabbing lunch in St. Joe’s before hitting the trail and slamming as many miles as we could (ideally Sauk Center, which also had a campground). St. Joes is quaint, but nice. Definitely didn’t seem like there was a whole lot going on besides the college and it was slowly turning in to a bedroom community for St. Cloud. Had a good lunch at the coffee shop downtown before setting out on the Lake Wobegon trail. This trail they had actually extended as far as Waite Park, so we had only a handful of miles of city streets in St. Cloud before picking up the trail that would carry us the next couple of days.

Cruised pretty good the next hour or so and took a quick water/rest break in Albany before slamming on to Freeport, where there was an ice cream shop. It was pretty tough temps for this stretch and a headwind. (90+ degrees for one and 10+ mph for the other).

Not too far to Melrose after that, and Sauk Center was only 8-10 miles farther. Snagged a sight on the lake and the campground and enjoyed some brown food and beers to celebrate a hefty mileage day (73ish miles).

Rain held off as well for now. It’s looking imminent for Friday, so we booked an Airbnb for Fergus Friday night (looking at another 70 miler).

Another good day in the books though.