Today Had None of yesterday's Amenities

Well our plan for today was to get up early and ride to Grand Marais. That would have been about a 170 mile round trip. Well, today was not yesterday. Instead of warm, sunny, and calm-- it was cold, rainy, and windy, so we slept in. Then we went and got coffee and, the bears be damned, we took it right into the tent and drank it, (we were in a campground inside the city limits of Two Harbors). Finally about 10:00 we decided to give it a try, from Gooseberry to Little Marais instead, a much shorter ride-- about 60 miles total.

We drove up to Gooseberry State park so we could start on the Gitchi-Gami trail, and headed off in a light rain and medium head wind. Kathy was pretty sure that the reason we did not see anyone on the trail was how steep the hills were. There were a lot of steep bike trail signs to be sure, but I was thinking that it was the fact that it was windy, and wet, and cold. OK I better admit it. For years I have been likely to tell people how I used to call Kathy on the phone at work (which is inside and has no windows) and mention to her that it was raining or whatever and she would tell me "no, it says right here on weather.com... Well today we were in the tent deciding what to do and I pulled up Accuweather on my Iphone to look at the radar to see what the rain was doing. I could get Two Harbors to come up but for some reason the radar image would not. She was commenting on how cold it was, and I said-- "no it is not all that cold, it is 75, it says so right here on my Iphone..... Ooops, she pointed out that you can't see your breath when it is 75

We rode up the length of the trail, and then on toward Little Marais on the North shore drive, This road varies from being a good bike friendly road with a nice wide shoulder-- to a narrow 2 foot wide path between the white line and the guard rail. There was a nice shoulder heading out of Silver bay, but it ended a few miles north of Ilgen City, so we turned around a little early, making for a 52 mile ride.