Bemidji, Minnesota

  

I’ve intersected with the Mississippi more times on this trip than I did with Highwwy 66 in Oklahoma last February.  The latest was in Bemidji, which lays claim to its lake being the last lake the River passes through before it becomes an entity all its own.  I’m close enough now to its headwaters that tourist shops in Bemidji sell Mississippi Headwaters souvenirs.

One tourist shop advertised it carried 230 different moccasins and 23 varieties of wild rice.  Besides being a tourist town Bemidji is also a college town, with three of them.  And it also claims to have the oldest statue of Paul Bunyan, of which there are many scattered throughout the state and elsewhere in the northlands all the way to Maine and into Canada.  It was erected in 1937.  It stands in front of the tourist office on the lake which was purportedly formed from the foot print of the giant lumberjack, one of his lesser exploits compared to his creating the Grand Canyon by pulling his ax behind him. Bemidji also boasts a Carnegie, which resides not far from Bunyan in the same park that fringes the large lake.  It is now a museum.

The further north I venture the more abundant are the lakes.  Roads have to wind all over to get around them.  The state’s license plate, of which I have scavenged one so far, promotes its 10,000 lakes.  The actual number is 11,842 of ten acres or more.  Wikipedia lists them all.  One would think a lake is always nearby, but four of its eighty-seven counties are lake-free.  Each of the lakes are named, some quite creatively.  There are lakes named Boo, Fink, Antler, Armstrong, Oscar, Beast and Fools.  

There aren’t enough different names to give each a name of its own.  There are many duplicates including six Lake Georges and more than two hundred Mud Lakes.There is only one lake beginning with the letter X (Xander) and three Qs (Quamba,  Quarry and Quinn).

In the northern woodlands the towns are smaller and fewer.  Many have one hundred or less residents. They are dependent on a once a week bookmobile for their library.  Since I’m dependent on them for the internet, I’ve gone as many as seventy miles without being able to connect.  In a town of nine hundred I asked an older guy if there was a library there.  He said the town was toomsmallmtomhave a library, but it didnt matter as no one there could read.   The camping couldn’t be easier.  I can watch the sun ease below the horizon and have no panic of finding a place to camp.  There is always a spot moments after it makes its exit.  

I was a little leery two nights ago when I saw three young men in camouflage sauntering along the road cradling rifles at dusk.  Their bright orange beanies identified them as hunters.  I pedaled three miles past them before I ventured into the forest past a gate down a weed-choked dirt road.  It took me into an overgrown meadow with a dilapidated elevated hunter’s blind in a corner that didn’t look as if it had been used in years.  I felt safe camping somewhat in the open with my bike besides my tent, assured that no hunter would mistake me for a Bambi.  It was a quiet night without even a deer venturing nearby.

I had camped thirty miles south of Park Falls and its Carnegie.  It was the first of these travels that was vacant.  It had been maintained well enough to attract a tenant.  It was located just a block from the town’s main intersection and its MacDonalds.

I arrived in time for its breakfast bargain of two sausage biscuits for three dollars, a better bargain and more calories than two McChickens, which I would have had if I’d been a bit later.  Six old guys sat at one table nursing coffees. Other elderly in pairs and alone were scattered about as if this were the local Senior Center.  One guy from the table of six came over and asked if I was traveling. He didn’t realize the town library had been funded by Carnegie nor that he had provided over sixty of them in the state.  He assured me I didn’t have to worry about snow until mid-November.

My lone Carnegie the day before in Aitkin was also in fine shape, showing no wear, virtually wrinkle-free despite its 111 years of use. A vinyl sign stretched over its entry, just below “Carnegie Library,” identifying it as an art center.  It’s wooden floor was well-varnished, and its walls were lined with paintings.  

A few of my miles to Bemidji were on a bike path, of which there are many in the state thanks to its many rail lines that transported logs.  The paths don’t always follow highways and often venture in a more direct route to my next destination through pasture lands and along lakes in utter tranquility.  I’ve encountered only one or two other cyclists.  It’s mostly been dog walkers and an occasional jogger.  

I have been generally happy to take advantage of the paths, though they sometimes can be rough going with an unintended, spine-jarring, mini-speed bump every three or four pedal strokes on pavement that has been laid in sections and not smoothed out.  If there’s an accompanying road with a smoother shoulder that is always my choice.  

Only once has a motorist slowed to angrily shout at me, “They built that path over there for you.”  The shoulders though can sometimes have similar uneven pavement with a break slashing across it every ten or fifteen feet.  They force me onto the road to spare not only my back but my spokes the abuse.  Fortunately there’s not much traffic.  I just have to monitor my mirror more than usual for traffic coming from behind.

I received the news from a baseball podcast that as of October 1 Canada is no longer going to require Americans to be vaccinated to enter the country which is good news for those teams with players who are vaccinated that could be going to play the Toronto Blue Jays in the playoffs.  It’s also good news for me, sparing me the rigmarole of registering on line to enter the country and specifying where and when I expect to arrive.   It could be in four or five days.  

Learning that was as exciting as hearing Carnegie as the answer to a question on Matt Stephen’s cycling podcast.  He always has a quiz for his guest relating to his home town.  His guest was the English broadcaster Rob Hatch and the question was, “What American philanthropist funded the library in Atherton,” Hatch’s home town.  It was a multi-choice question and Hatch answered  it correctly. 

Brainerd, Minnesota

 

And I cross the Mississippi again.  It divided Brainerd with the old part of the city to the east along with its Carnegie Library, and all the new developments, including a Walmart, to the west.  I’m closing in on its headwaters, but it’s a significant river even this far north.   It’s not quite cold enough for ice to be flowing, though I awoke to the first frost on my tent.  I’m almost as far north as Duluth, a latitude I’ll be exceeding today.

It’s unseasonably cold.  Even the locals are complaining.  It’s been forty-five degrees the past two nights when I retreated to my tent at dusk.  The wind has been blowing from the north the past six days, bringing colder and colder air.  It is due to switch today bringing some warmer southern air and a welcome tailwind. 

I’ve had to supplement my Marlboro sleeping bag with some snow pants and a down vest from a Salvation Army thrift store, as well as most of the clothes I’ve brought and the fleece blanket I bought at a Dollar Store and a slightly heartier blanket I found discarded along the road.  I checked the internet to see if it might reveal what temperature the bag is rated to, probably not even fifty degrees. Quite a few people are selling this vintage 1990 bag on eBay and Etsy, but no where could I find a temperature rating for it, not that that would make any difference. 

Usually when I crawl into my sleeping bag at night I initially warm up.  I feel no warmth from this one.  Since I know the night is only going to get colder, I save a layer or two to add later.  By morning I have no more layers other than my Goretex jacket, which I put on as I emerge into the cold.  As always, moving about warms me up.

 

Brainerd’s Carnegie was on its busy four-lane Main Street and had become a “Retirement Learning Center.”  A side entrance had been added for those seniors who would have difficulty mounting the usual dozen or so steps to the building’s entrance as is characteristic of most Carnegies.  It further embraced the norm with a quartet of columns and a pair of noble light fixtures and further distinguished itself with a mini-dome. 

I appreciated it all the more after the desecration of the Carnegie in Fergus Falls, ninety-five miles to the west. An appalling glassy addition to the front of the building was such an insult that it would almost have been better if the building had been razed rather than be subjected to such ignominy. The only saving grace was its relatively unmarred backside, which gave a hint of its former magnificence.  

 

None of the new tenants (the local newspaper, an insurance company and a law firm) would accept blame for the abomination the building had become, all claiming they had moved in after it had been plastered with the unsightly addition to its front side.  It’s unimaginable that whoever was in charge of building permits at the time would have allowed this to happen.  

The city ought to be raising funds to buy the building and return it to its former glory.  It was high on the magnificence scale of Carnegies with a rare arched backside to go along with its dome.   It is now an eyesore and embarrassment that has to appall one and all.  I have come upon a handful of other irresponsible and shameful additions or alterations of Carnegies, some that have been totally swallowed up by an addition, but nothing as repulsive as this, as hints of the building’s nobility have been allowed to peek through. 

My visit to Fergus Falls wasn’t all bad, as it offered up a thrift store on its outskirts, so I didn’t have to go searching for one.  It provided me with a down vest and bright purple snow pants that any Viking fan would be proud to wear to a game in winters arctic temperatures. I was lucky to get them for $1.99.  They have kept at least my bottom half toasty warm.  My visit to the store wasn’t without mishap, as the zipper of the first down vest I tried on made it up to my throat but wouldn’t unzip.  One of the sales ladies had to reach up to my throat with a pair of scissors to cut it off, first asking if if I trusted her to be careful.  It would have been a disaster had I not tested it and been shackled with it later in my tent.  It was so tight I couldn’t pull it over my head. 

My seventy-nine miles yesterday put me over 10,000 for the year on Strava, though I would have passed it several days before if not for two or three hundred missed miles.  I had been on a pace for 15,000 miles for the year but less than two hundred miles during my month in Telluride derailed that effort unless I extend this trip longer than planned. That’s not likely this far north with it only getting colder, 

Alexandria, Minnesota

 

Rather than beginning this post with an exaltation of all the tributes to Sinclair Lewis in Sauk Centre, his hometown, I must first report on the theft of my sleeping bag, the second time such a travesty has befallen me in the past two years.  The first was outside a supermarket on the outskirts of Washington D. C. as I was winding up a trip, so it was no dire disaster.  

This time, however, I wasn’t so fortunate.  It happened at a MacDonalds in the small town of Morris on a Sunday when no stores were open that might have had a replacement.  The best I could come up with was a fleece blanket at a Dollar Store.  The nearest larger town was Alexandria, forty-five miles away, where I could resort to a hotel if I couldn’t find a sleeping bag for the night. It would be a hard push into a stiff headwind to make it by dark.  With the temperature dropping to forty at night I doubt the fleece blanket and all my clothes would suffice.

Fifteen miles before Alexandria I took a break at a convenience store in the tiny town of Kensington.  An older guy on a tricycle arrived just as I did.  He had a bundle of advertisements on the back of his bike that he was delivering about town.  I asked if Alexandria might have a Walmart where I could replace my sleeping bag, telling him mine had just been stolen a few hours ago.  He said it did, but he had an extra I could have.  That was too good to be true.  He said he lived nearby so we went straight there.

He didn’t have to go into the house to find it, as it was on the shelf in his garage. It was in a bright red stuff sack with a Marlboro insignia which I instantly recognized as an item from the long-gone Marlboro catalogue full of useful, well-made gear that one could acquire with the UPC code torn from the cigarette packs, which I knew all too well.  I was never a smoker, but I collected hundreds of discarded packs along the road for a period of several years, one of the best things I ever scavenged.  I redeemed them for jackets and shorts and watches and many other items.  

It was a sad, sad  day when Congress banned cigarette companies from giving smokers the incentive to smoke more with these coupons.  Camel and Newport and Virginia Slims and Benson and Hedges and all of the brands competed with one another to have the most enticing stuff. It was a much anticipated day each year when Marlboro released its new catalogue.  Newport for a while gave out movie passes for a certain number of packs.  The value of most coupons was about twenty-five cents, so it was like stopping to pick up a quarter.  A friend and I would bike around the city on Sunday mornings and harvest forty or more. 

It’s been a couple decades since they were banned, so this sleeping bag was a relic.  We unrolled it to make sure it wasn’t bug-infested.  It looked brand new and had a heavy-duty zipper and clips to synch it down, not cheap at all.  It had a fleece liner, probably not as warm as the down bag that had been stolen, but with the Dollar Store blanket it could be warm enough.  If not, I’d just have to wear some clothes.   My good fortune in coming upon this sleeping bag didn’t wholly blunt the indignity of being robbed, but it helped.  Henceforth I will have to better secure my tent and sleeping bag on the back of my bike so thieves can’t so easily detach them.  It is certainly disheartening though  that such thievery could happen even in small town America.

Anyway, great thanks to Greg, who works as a lift-operator for the nearby ski resort of Andes Tower Hills.  His ski season can start as early as Halloween if a cold spell hits, though usually not until well into November.  His resort has snow-making capabilities, so when sub-freezing temperatures come around he can be called to work any time.  He goes to work with a bundle of clothes, not knowing how many layers he might need. 

The down sleeping bag I had stolen hadn’t been warm enough the night before, as I needed to put on my sweater during the night as I slept, as the temperature nudged below forty.  I camped in a narrow band between two corn fields.  As I returned to the road,  a pickup truck turned onto the small path between the fields.  I expected a reprimand or a stern query from the burly driver, but he shockingly greeted me most cordially, saying his son had been out bow hunting in the morning and had seen my tent.  He hoped he hadn’t disturbed me.  I assured him he hadn’t and asked if his son had had any luck as I’d noticed quite a few ears of corn nibbled on.  He acknowledged the deer were a menace and was sorry his son hadn’t seen any.  It was a pleasant bookend to a day that had a calamitous middle.

I had camped a few miles past Glenwood, where I’d visited my second Carnegie of the day.  Carnegie was so synonymous with libraries in this region, that his name over the entry was in larger letters than the “Glenwood Public Library” above it. 

The Sauk Centre Carnegie twenty-five miles before it was bereft of any lettering on the building or acknowledgement of Carnegie, letting its identify be known by a sign out front calling it the Bryant Library.  A statue of Sinclair Lewis and a plaque relating the significance of his book “Main Street” also graced its grounds.  Lewis didn’t grow up with the library, as he entered Yale in 1903, the year it was constructed.  A plaque on the library quotes him as saying that growing up reading was his “greatest adventure.” 

Lewis had the impetus to succeed as his father was the town physician and he was another example of the third-born son syndrome, striving to outdo his older brothers.  His major breakthrough didn’t come until 1920 when he was thirty-four with the publication of “Main Street” loosely based on his home town.  It was the best-selling book of the time and made him a wealthy man.  Its less than flattering portrayal of his home town, named Gopher Prairie in the book, didn’t initially sit well with Sauk Centre.  The local newspaper went six months before it acknowledged it.  In time though Sauk Centre fully embraced him.  He followed up “Main Street” with five best selling novels almost one per year and in 1930 became the first American awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

There is no indication that he was a cyclist, though he might have been, as he was a great admirer of the ardent cyclist H. G. Wells, so much so that he named his son Wells.  H. L. Mencken referred to Lewis as “the red-haired tornado from the Minnesota woods.”

The intersection in the middle of town is Sinclair Lewis Avenue and Original Main Street, not merely Main Street.  In 1994 the Main Street was placed on the National Register of 
Historic Places.  Sinclair Lewis Avenue leads a mile east to the cemetery where Lewis is buried.  He died in Rome in 1951 at the age of sixty-four succumbing to alcohol.  His ashes were brought to the family plot where they reside between his mother and father.  I didn’t have to search hard to find his modest marker, as a plaque at the entry to the cemetery indicated it could be found “three rows in, eight monuments to the left.”

Two murals in town  honor him and quotes from “Main Street” adorn benches. 

The campground on the town lake is named for him. 

The home he grew up in can be visited.  Unfortunately I can’t report on it, nor the museum in the library or how the library honored him, as they closed at noon on Saturday, shortly before I pulled into town following a magnificent bike path for over twenty miles.

I followed up my two Carnegies on Saturday with two more on Sunday, neither of which continue to serve as libraries.  The Carnegie in Morris is now the Stevens County Historical Society and Museum.  It was more emphatic than Glenwood with its acknowledgment of Carnegie, letting his name suffice as to the identity of the building.

The Carnegie in Alexandria now is residence to several businesses and is inscribed with “Carnegie Building” over its entry.

St. Cloud, Minnesota

 

 The Mississippi continues to be my companion.  I crossed it five times in my perambulations about the Twin Cities tracking down the seven Carnegies scattered about its neighborhoods, and I continued to follow it along the Great River Road for seventy miles to St. Cloud, where I will bid it farewell as I head west to Sauk Centre for the next Carnegie.

There are more than twenty bridges over its serpentine route through the metropolis, most of which have a bike lane in this very bike-friendly community.  Many of the lanes about the city had plastic posts separating them from motorized traffic.  Signs occasionally affirmed cyclists the right to take over an entire lane when there wasn’t space for an actual bike lane.  And for once on this trip I wasn’t a lone cyclist.

I was glad for the opportunity to explore the city hopping from Carnegie to Carnegie, most of which were in quiet residential neighborhoods.  The first was in a Hmong community in the northeast of St. Paul.  It was initially known as the Arlington Hills Branch.  It had been replaced in 2014 and became a private library taking the name of the East Side Freedom Library serving as an archive of Hmong materials.

I crossed the Mississippi for the first time heading south five miles to the Riverview Branch, also in St. Paul, on George Street.  It was a similar design of one large room with high ceilings and large arched windows letting in loads of light.  The library is soon to be expanded when the funds can be found.  Plans for the expansion have already been drawn up, though there are still community meetings seeking more input from library patrons.

It was twelve miles, mostly west, to the next Carnegie, this one in Minneapolis with two crossings of the Mississippi.  My climb to the first of two bridges over the River gave a panoramic view of the skylines of the two cities.  St. Paul was dominated by the dome of a large cathedral, as is common in France, while Minneapolis was highlighted by a cluster of mini-skyscrapers, at least in comparison to Chicago.  

The Hosmer Branch was similar to the previous two and likewise in a quiet residential neighborhood, though my route there took me on busy streets.  I had to remind myself that I was in a large city, as it’s streets were lined with small, well-tended homes, a sharp contrast to Chicago.  There was hardly a two-flat to be seen or an apartment building of any sort.  It looked like a most liveable city.  

It was a quick three miles northeast without having to cross the River to the Franklin Carnegie on Franklin Street, a busy, four-lane thoroughfare.  An Aldi was across the street.  It was nearing dinner time, but it’s dumpster was behind a high fence with a hefty lock, so there was no supplementing my ramen and beans.  

It was nearly ten miles to the next Carnegie back in St. Paul and over the River for the fourth time.  It was nearly an hour until dark and I became reconciled to having to find a motel for the night, as it wasn’t likely I’d have time to slip out of the city before dark with three Carnegies still on my agenda.

Wikipedia gave a faulty address for the Hamline University Carnegie, the only academic library he funded in Minnesota.  It clearly wasn’t the towering three-story building with an address of 1536 Hewitt.  A librarian at the nearby new, modern library said the former library was just across the quad, and it was indeed much more recognizable as a building that Carnegie would have funded.  It is now the Giddens/Alumni Learning Center.

I still had ample light to reach the next Carnegie just two miles away, but just past the university I came upon the first motel I had seen in nearly four hours of biking around the cities, so seized upon it.  I had been hoping to hold off on the first motel of these travels until the next night as rain was predicted for much of the day, but I let my better judgment prevail, though I had been looking forward to the challenge of finding a place to camp on the outskirts of the metropolis.

The forecast called for the rain to start at ten the next morning and to continue all day.  My hope was to be well out of the metropolis by the time the rain started. I began the day with the St. Anthony Park Branch.  It was in a more affluent part of St. Paul than the previous Carnegies.  It was well-maintained and featured well-tended landscaping with a variety of flowers. 

It was then seven miles through the heart of Minneapolis, over the River one last time and past the University of Minnesota campus, to the Sumner Branch on the four-lane Olson Memorial Highway.  It was the morning rush hour, but there was little traffic to speak of, as if everyone was still working at home.  

It was only 8:30 but the sky was growing darker as if the rain could start at any moment.  It held off for an hour, arriving a bit before it was predicted, but was light enough that cars only needed intermittent wipers.  It was just fifty degrees.  The rain dropped the temperature a few degrees keeping it below fifty all day.  The rain varied between a mist and a drizzle with only a couple spells of actual rain drops.  When I reached the large city of St. Cloud an hour before dark I knew I had to take advantage of one of its motels.  Even if the rain had let up, my shoes and gear wasn’t going to dry in my tent.  At least the forecast is rain free for the next week and the temperature will get into the upper sixties, promising the best of cycling.

The inclement weather was bearable knowing I was closing in on Sauk City, birthplace of Sinclair Lewis.  I was eager to see how the Carnegie of his youth honored him.  And beyond Sauk City I would have two or three small-town Carnegies a day to look forward to.  It was good to be back in the business of anticipating the new.

Stillwater, Minnesota

My first encounter with a police officer came as I was investigating an abandoned farmstead as a place to camp. I noticed him stopped at a nearby intersection after I turned away from the dilapidated house unable to penetrate the thick overgrown weeds surrounding its backside.  I thought I’d give the barn a try but the presence of the officer gave me pause.  


I was hoping it was just a coincidence that he was stopped at the intersection but when he didn’t move I had to concede he had spotted me and I needed to clear out.  The only way was to go past him.  He called out through his rolled down passenger window asking if I was returning to the highway I had just exited.  He said he was responding to two calls from motorists who thought it was dangerous for a cyclist to be riding on the shoulder of the road.  

I confessed I was looking for a place to pitch my tent for the night.  He suggested I go back down the side road behind us that had a dead end sign and slip into the forest.  He told me I better hurry as rain was imminent.  He was surprisingly cordial, not asking for ID, or running me off.  And thus I enjoyed my first forest camping and softest ground of the trip, as well as the most secluded.

The previous night I camped along the Mississippi besides a beach and a boat launch.  I had followed a sign to the “recreational area” thinking there might be camping.  There was, but not sanctioned.  I was somewhat hidden by two large fir trees besides a basketball court and a soccer field.  As the light was fading a car pulled into the parking lot and I heard the chatter of young voices and the bounce of a ball.  I feared a group had come to shoot some hoops in the cool of the evening.  Fortunately they went over to the soccer field and only kicked the ball around for a few minutes in the waning light.

My sleep was interrupted by an occasional freight train, indicating the union that had been threatening a strike had ratified the settlement of a few days ago. I was closer to the river than the train tracks, but I didn’t hear any vessels breaking the water.  I could see an occasional barge, but no young boys on rafts.

The road along the river offered occasional overlooks which were generally accompanied by a historical marker relating to logging or the construction of a fort and other incidents in the early history of the region. One was at the site of Maiden Rock where a young Indian woman was said to have lept to her death rather than being forced into marriage with someone she “dispised.”  A famous climb in the Tour de France in the Vosges, La Planche des Belles Filles, also takes its name from a legend of women leaping to their deaths rather than being forced into sexual relations with their conquerors.

Not far south of Maiden Rock along the river i passed thoughnthe small town of Pepin where Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the “Little House on the Prairie” series of books, was born in 1867.  It hosts a museum devoted to her as well as her childhood home.  A gift shop was packed with trinkets and her many books.  It was reminiscent of a museum in Red Cloud, Nebraska devoted to Willa Cather that Janina and I passed on our drive home from Telluride last month.

My long prologue, over 450 miles, to the first Carnegie that was new to me came to an end in Stillwater, just over the border from Wisconsin. But first I renewed acquaintances with a Carnegie in Hudson, just across Lake Saint Croix that separates the states north of the Mississippi.  It was still home to a law firm, which had let  the ivy adorning its exterior cover its designation as a library over its entrance. 

And to welcome me to Minnesota the wind switched the day before from the south to a northerly, dropping the temperature twenty degrees from the 80s to the 60s, and then another twenty degrees during the night. I needed my sweater, a recent addition to my wardrobe thanks to Telluride’s Free Box, for the first time.   I welcomed the cool, but not the head wind, though it wasn’t too severe blunted by the forested terrain.  The further north I venture, the more azure the sky and the fluffier the clouds.  The sky is almost as pleasurable to gaze upon as the countryside.

I crossed into Minnesota on a new pedestrian/bicycle bridge and headed straight to the Carnegie just a few blocks away.  At first I feared it had been razed, but it was only blocked by a huge three-story addition.  It’s frontside retained all its majesty and was unmarred by the addition.  It was an early Carnegie dating to 1902 and had been expanded previously by a pair of matching additions to its sides.  It’s rotunda was surrounded by columns and was under a mini-dome.  It was a good start to my set of new Carnegies on this trip.  Now it’s on to the Twin Cities, twenty five miles away for a quick six more.

LaCrosse, Wisconsin

 

The time of Trump is past.  I have biked three hundred miles in the past four days and haven’t come upon a single Trump sign or flag or proclamation.  For the past six years, and as recently as my spring ride around Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota,  rural America has been thick with Trump mania. No more.  I’ve encountered just one lone tired tirade from one of his ilk who avoided invoking his name and so off-the-wall that one could only question the mental health of whoever might be spewing such ravings.

It is a wonder that the authorities haven’t whitewashed these blathering.  Even those who might agree with his bent would not want to be associated with such crazed forthrightness.

The most common sign on the byways of Wisconsin has been “ATV Route” and in small towns “All streets are ATV routes unless otherwise posted.”  I have yet to see an ATV, only hearing a couple barreling through the forest.  They may be more common in the winter months.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen signs warning of horses and buggies on the roads as they have been a common site.  It may be that motorists are so accustomed to seeing them that there is no need to note their presence.  They frequently overtake me on ascents.  I can hear the clip-clop of horse hooves coming up from behind me at better than ten miles per hour.  I can fly past them on the descents.  All greet me with a smile and a wave, whether passing me from behind or approaching me from the opposite direction.  

The sound of clip-clops is so ubiquitous they’ve even intruded upon my dreams or so I thought, as when I awoke I discovered I wasn’t dreaming as someone was actually trotting by in the midnight hour. I heard them well into the night when I camped along the road in some high weeds behind a pile of rocks when no cornfield offered itself, only soybeans.  So far I’ve only seen one of the clan who forego motorized vehicles on a bike, a woman in a bonnet and dress leisurely pedaling along with a wicker basket on the front of her upright handlebars. 

The landscape has become much hillier and forested after crossing into Wisconsin.  There are patches of corn, but nothing on the scale of the vast fields in Illinois that have narrow grassy breaks amongst them that are ideal for camping.  I’ve camped the past two nights in high weeds shielded from the road by thin bands of trees.  The dew has been heavy and there has been a lingering fog in the morning, not so thick as to limit visibility too much, other than putting a mist on my glasses that I have to wipe every minute or so.

As I closed in on the Mississippi and LaCrosse I had a couple of options of what road to take.  A retired school teacher at a Casey’s General Store where I was taking a break advised me to stick to the main highway rather than going off on the county roads, saying it’d be less hilly.  He returned a couple minutes later saying he’d taken a poll inside and the consensus was it’d be better for me to take the county roads.  No one knew though that ten miles down the road a bridge was out, forcing me to take a detour.  There was no traffic, so I just appreciated the extra miles it allowed me in such a pristine setting.

Only one Carnegie has presented itself so far since crossing into Wisconsin.  It came in Platteville and was as pristine as it was when it opened in 1915 having been recently fully restored.  It had served as the town library until 1975, then had a brief tenure as a teen center before an architectural firm bought it. A plaque gave credit to the present owner of the building, who bought it in 2015, for a six year renovation of the building, completed in 2022. 

Platteville was once prominent in Chicago sports as its college hosted the Bears pre-season training camp during their years under Mike Ditka.  I was among the legions of Chicagoans who made the two hundred mile drive there for a close-up look of those Super Bowl Bears on the practice field.  I took an Australian friend who had a short stint as a professional in Australia Rules Football.  He was astounded at the size of his American counterparts.  He played without pads and couldn’t imagine trying to contend with someone the size of William Perry, the Refrigerator.  

Shortly before LaCrosse I joined up with the Great River Road that will take me along the Mississippi for better than one hundred miles.  I am ready for a cascade of memories of biking it from the opposite direction with Don Jaime twenty years ago.  His account of our journey from Minneapolis to Chicago can be found on the blog in July of 2002, ten posts worth.  You can read of our intrusion upon a church social and finding a Bible along the road and Jim’s time on a nuclear submarine. 

Darlington, Wisconsin

 The first two nights of my annual fall ride have been spent in a Grant Wood painting, as I’ve camped amidst forests of gallant, towering corn stalks awaiting harvest.  Wood has firmly been entrenched in my consciousness after Janina and I visited the largest collection of his works in the Cedar Rapids Art Museum, formerly a Carnegie Library, on our drive out to Telliride a month ago.  Rural Iowa predominated his paintings with fields of corn a common theme.  As I’ve bicycled past miles and miles of cornfields in northwest Illinois on my way to Minnesota I catch one view after another that I’d have to stop and paint if I were Wood. 

I can thank the threat of a rail strike for these miles through the cornfields, as Amtrak cancelled all trains on its Empire Builder route that I’d planned to take to Minneapolis after our return from a month in Telluride, which would have deposited me beyond the corn belt up in the north woods.  I was too eager to be off on my bike to wait around for the strike to be settled or averted.   Even if it were to be settled it could be days before a seat became available, since several days worth of trains had been cancelled creating a backlog of passengers.  

I didn’t mind at all biking the four hundred miles to  Minneapolis, as it allowed me the interlude of five days of rural biking from one huge metropolis to another rather than plunging straight from one into another.  Seven Carnegies await me in the Twin Cities and then fifteen more in the northern tier of the state, then I’ll have completed another state, having already visited the twenty-six in the lower part of the state. I might even slip into Ontario for three more. 

Having completed Illinois and Wisconsin I didn’t have to alter my route for Carnegies, though I’ve been able to revisit a handful that were on my way, always a treat.  It’s surprising how vivid the memories of previous visits can be.  Rather than approaching them with anticipation of what version of grandeur and grace awaits me, I approach with the anticipation of renewing acquaintances.  I’m never disappointed.  They are as noble and stately as I recalled.  

The first in Oregon, on the wide Rock River, had added a bike locked to its bike rack with a wooden box offering free books. It is a rare Carnegie that hasn’t  been expanded, though it did have a couple of alterations—the addition of an elevator and the conversion of its fireplace from wood to gas and a plexiglass window atop its circulation desk, none of which diminished its charm.

The next in Mount Carroll, a town with historic plaques on homes and buildings throughout the small town, was undergoing renovation.  There wasn’t a chance this town with a strong sense of its past would demolish its Carnegie as have eighteen communities in Illinois, the same number as Minnesota.  The  temporary library was half a block away in the former Senior Center across from the County Courthouse, which filled an entire block in the center of the town.  Old cars were lined up on two streets for a vintage car festival with crowds of people giving them a close look.

I had a long fast descent out of Mount Carroll, explaining the town’s name, going over thirty miles per hour for the first time since leaving Chicago.  The misty rain pelted me hard at that speed.  Turning north towards Wisconsin, thirty miles away, I was finally able to take advantage of a slight tailwind after having mostly ridden west.  The forecast called for a slight southerly breeze the next three days, keeping the temperature an unseasonable eighty degrees.

The warmth has had me intent on keeping my thermal water bottles packed with ice from the self-serve fast-food ice dispensers.  The ice can keep for a couple of hours, each sip a divine pleasure.  I was thwarted at my first Taco Bell, as it’s ice-dispenser was out-of-service, and I was only offered a partially-filled small cup of ice with my burrito.  And to add insult to injury, the Taco Bell was further economizing by having done away with its WiFi, not an uncommon act these days with so many people having phone service that provides it.  At least it hadn’t covered it’s electrical outlets, as some do, so I could do some charging.

The last Carnegie in Illinois is the northernmost in the state in Warren just shy of the Wisconsin border.   As with Mount Carroll, this town of 1,500 hadn’t expanded  its Carnegie.  It was just off its Main Street, on the other side of the train tracks beside a history museum. 

After crossing into Wisconsin I was able to take advantage of its lightly traveled county roads designated by capital letters.  They provide as fine cycling as one could ask for.  And it’s only going to get better the further north I venture.  As always, it is a great pleasure  to be off on the bike with nary a concern.