September rides

[north woods gal]

Yup, must be September. Had to wear leggings to start my ride, yesterday, but typical September, things warmed up, nicely.

My 23 mile ride turned out to be more of an adventure than I anticipated, though. Decided I needed to wean myself out of so much single track MTB work and figured riding gravel roads would make for a nice transition before getting serious on pavement. Headed to one of my favorite (and nastiest) sections of gravel road. About 4 miles in, stopped at an intersection with a gated road off to the side. Had stopped there, before, but this time I read some of the fine print on the posted map of the area (all managed forest land, owned by the country). Read in the fine print that bicycles and foot traffic are allowed on the gated roads, but no vehicles when the gates are up and the gates stay up all year long expect for deer season. Great!

Hoisted the bike over the gate and with the map still in mind, took off down the gravel road. Now, keep in mind, this is a remote area and there was a very good chance that I was the first person to use these roads all summer long. For sure, saw no sign of anyone having used them and, given the way the roads were washed out in spots, obviously the county hadn't maintained them for some time. The roads were actually pretty decent, overall, though, having been closed to vehicle traffic. Much better shape than the 4 miles of tortured gravel and sand roads open to ATV traffic that I needed to ride to get to this spot.

Glorious riding. Total serenity, total privacy and lots of wildlife sign, including what were some possible wolf droppings and some that were very definitely bear and tracks of both in places. Yup, I was in heaven.

Somewhere along the way, though, missed a turn in the network of roads, so, okay, I was lost. Had a compass, though, and figured if I just kept tracking west, I would eventually come out on a highway I knew. I was right. 9 miles, later, through some awesomely wild country, came to another gate with the highway on the other side, just as predicted.

Needed to ride two miles on this very busy highway to get back to my local paved road that would take me the several miles home, though. No problem, not with my Trek 29er plus Stashe with its 3" tires - a bike I use for these isolated backroads which often turn to sand. Even though the highway did have a narrow paved shoulder, just rode the Stashe out onto the much wider gravel shoulder for safety's sake. Actually, the Stashe handled riding this much better maintained gravel with ease and no problem keeping a reasonable 12 to 13 mph pace. Another discovery! With this bike, I could ride this highway and others like it in the area by taking the wide gravel shoulders with this bike. (Note: our highways have these wide gravel shoulders for the sake of handling all our snow in the winter.)

This discovery really is a gold mine for me. Probably 20 miles of these gated gravel roads in this area to explore and all just a short 7 mile ride or so from my house. Will return soon, but this time with a printed map or maybe it's time for me to buy that long overdue GPS.

23 miles total, 14 of which were awesome, remote gravel.