Grand Marais, Minnesota

  

My much anticipated siting of Lake Superior came after I crested a rise in the road and began a five-mile, one thousand foot descent to Two Harbors and its Carnegie Library.  Looking down upon the huge expanse of water in the distance felt akin to a sailor siting land after an extended period of sea. It was breathtaking.   Now there was a lake, vast,y superior to the hundreds I’d ridden by in the past two weeks.  All of them put together couldn’t have come close to filling it. It brought me great cheer, especially since I had two days of biking along it’s coast line to look forward to.

It concluded a seventy-mile stretch between towns without a single service station or country store, just a small mobile home in front of someone’s house selling bait and other supplies for hunters and fishermen, except it was closed.  

I was getting nervous about running out of water after consuming two of my three bottles at my campsite the night before.  I was down to a quarter of a bottle and reduced to taking sips when I came upon a tavern after forty-five miles at a crossroads.  The bar tender had just one customer interested enough to come in and watch the NFL and drink.  They advised me against taking the route I intended to follow from there, unless I liked gravel, which I don’t.  I’ve been fortunate that all of the county roads I’ve ventured off on have been paved.  The route I intended to take was a little shorter, as it angled, but I was happy to be spared of rough roads.  

The Two Harbors Carnegie was the first in a while had needed an addition for its growing community.  It was to the side and provided the new entrance.  The closed original entrance was somewhat blocked by two large trees and a lush patch of tall grass and flowers with a sign explaining it provided a refuge for pollinators.  

I could celebrate not only reaching Lake Superior, but also nearly completing my slate of Carnegies in Minnesota.  It the twenty-first in Minnesota on this trip and the final one until I return to the northwest corner of the state after a week in Canada gathering three more.  The first comes in Thunder Bay, one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Two Harbors along the shore of Lake Superior.    I’ll have stretches of two hundred and one hundred and fifty miles to the next two in Canada before returning to the US.  Most of my riding will be westerly, but I will have to push one hundred miles north, and just when a cold front is due. 

From Two Harbors I have been riding on Highway 61, immortalized by Bob Dylan with his song and seminal album titled Highway 61 Revisited released in 1965.  It was his sixth album and marked his transition from acoustic to rock.  It is considered one of the greatest albums of all time, and included the song “Like a Rolling Stone,” which “Rolling Stone” magazine  ranked the fourth greatest song of all time.

The critic Michael Gray declared the “1960s” began with this album, profiling the culture and politics of the times with “lyrics that were light years ahead of everyone else.”  The Nobel committee would agree.

Highway 61 had special meaning to Dylan as it runs from the top,to the bottom of the country, beginning at the Canadian border, passing through Duluth, where Dylan was born, and continues  through Memphis to New Orleans, hotbeds of the blues that he embraced.  None of the road signs alluded to its link to the world of music, though I had two old-timers bring it up.

One was an outfitter who runs trips for people who come to the area to hike or bike, including a recent client from .chicago.  He pulled over and flagged me down to warn me of a perilous stretch of highway and how to avoid it.  There was way more traffic on 61 than I anticipated, non-stop from both directions, about as many RVs as trucks.  The shoulder on the road varied from wide to narrow and from bumpy to smooth.  There was a periodic bike path, but I didn’t always take it as it would wind down and around the occasional ravines and canyons the road came upon.  

The terrain was up and down and included a couple of tunnels, one half a mile long.  Though the road hugged the coast line, it rarely offered a view of the lake, blocked by trees.  The predominant sign was “Private Property, No Trespassing.”   They were interspersed with an occasional “State Park” sign.  Homes were mostly on the lakeside of the road, though they were generally well-hidden by the trees.  Could be a lot of second homes, as Sunday evening it was bumper-to-bumper traffic headed south back to Duluth and Minneapolis, with hardly anyone heading north as I was.  

Grand Marais with over a little more than a thousand people is the last significant town before the border forty miles away.  Maybe the traffic will thin.  I haven’t noticed a great many Canadian license plates, nor 18-wheelers transporting product, leading me to believe much of the traffic is tousost -related going to the resorts that dot the way, though the cold temperatures don’t encourage much water or outdoor activity.  The leaves are beginning to change, so maybe that is the draw.

I’ve got my passport ready and evidently won’t need to show a vaccination card, Canada relaxing its entry requirements just three days ago.