Trail Tunnels
Morning started out wet and drizzly again so we lingered in our tents for an extra hour or so.
Walked delicately down the steep, slippery hill to start riding to Sparta from Elroy.
Had to climb long gradual inclines to reach each of the 3 tunnels.
Finally got some sunshine!
Total elevation biked for the day: 1300 ft. Not bad for railroad grade trail.
Total mileage: 51.5.
Tunnels are an interesting experience. The longest one, completed in 1873, cut into an overhead natural spring that rains down still to this day.
We met a DNR staffer who agreed to check our state trail passes while being photographed.
Since we were camping in Elroy, we turned around after making it through the longest tunnel and didn’t ride all the way down into Sparta.
Rode into a brief rain shower on the way back but didn’t get too wet. By the time we reached Elroy again, we were dry.
Meal highlight of the day was lunch at a Mexican home cooking restaurant in Norwalk. They had tubs of ice cream to choose from to top it off.
The Elroy-Sparta trail and its tunnels were a primary goal of this multi-day excursion. Mission accomplished.
We hope to ride down and back on one more different trail today before driving home in the afternoon.
It’s been a fabulous few days of adventure with Rich. ++👍 Highly recommend!
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Rained Out
Rained off and on all night to saturate everything and then drizzled all day.
Neither of us wanted our bikes and bodies to get covered with grime.
Alternate plan:
Huge breakfast at Sparta Family Restaurant.
Tour the Deke Slayton Memorial Space & Bicycle Museum.
Newest Mission Impossible movie and more popcorn than humans should eat.
Drove to our second campground in Elroy where there is an epic climb to get from the parking lot to the sites.
Needed a shower after that workout, which was handily available at the trailhead.
Tents up, but not drying out due to the persistent ongoing drizzle.
Fabulous time regardless the lack of pedaling.
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Sparta Start
No rain.
50 miles.
Sparta to La Crosse and back to Sparta.
Met Sean who is riding from Milwaukee to Minneapolis and we rode together to early dinner in La Crosse. Great company.
Thank you to Rich for contributing some of his photos!
Days Away
I’m leaving today for a few days of camping and cycling, which will serve well as a warmup to the week-long Tour of Minnesota ride coming in mid-June. This time of year, a few days away from growing grass can be an issue, so I took some extra steps yesterday to address places that don’t receive regular attention.
Cyndie asked me to clean up our trails, which meant I would be using the string trimmers.
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Between fuel refills for the power trimmer, we decided to park the water tank in the ATV trailer behind the rocking chairs on the lookout hill. Cyndie has planted grass seed on the bare spot in front of the rockers. To get the Grizzly ATV out, I needed to move the riding mower. As long as I had that out, I decided to do a quick mowing of the round pen. We like to keep that turf closely cropped, and the horses aren’t thorough enough with their grazing in there to stay ahead of it all.
Since I had the riding mower inside the pasture fence, I figured I may as well make one pass along the inside of all the fence lines to minimize the amount of trimming that still needs to happen beneath the wires. For some reason, mowing inside the fences is something I usually wait too long to do. It feels good to have done it before the grass got too tall for the mower to handle. It makes the trimming so much simpler, you’d think I would make this a higher priority.
With all these non-standard mowing steps accomplished, I’m feeling okay about sneaking away for a few days of biking. I expect my posts for the rest of the week will be more rudimentary since I plan to leave my laptop at home and will be using my cell phone for all my communication.
Hopefully, the battery pack I have will be up to the task of keeping my phone charged. I’ll be charged simply by living in the great outdoors and riding my bike for multiple days in a row.
Maybe I should think about packing my gear in the dwindling few hours left before my scheduled departure…
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They Won!
The CrossCribb rematch became a best-of-three after Cyndie and Anneliese defeated George and me in our second game in the fading sunshine out on the deck.
I trust Cyndie’s score-keeping despite how that photo makes it look like she needed to defend their point total. Game three got underway after dinner, and it didn’t take long for the dominance of their victory to unfold.
Luckily, the post-game celebration included ice cream for all, so that softened the blow of losing a little for me.
Earlier in the day, we lunched at Tattersall Distillery in River Falls. That location used to be a Shopko before George and Anneliese moved to Princeton, MN, so it was fun to show them what it has become since then.
In the afternoon, I was able to check off mowing the labyrinth from my list. It is now freshly trimmed.
For those of you who have known us for a long time, you may notice that we didn’t go to the lake for Memorial Day weekend. This is traditionally the big work weekend to clean up from winter’s wear and tear and prepare the community property for the summer. Cyndie can’t recall a Memorial weekend when she didn’t go up to the lake place.
This year, the “cabin” was reserved for a special event for her nephew, so that meant we were available to be home to host the visit with George and Anneliese.
It’s been a pretty special way to take a break from tradition, regardless of a win or a loss in our CrossCribb competitions.
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People Connecting
Our social calendar is humming lately at an uncharacteristic pace. On Friday, we went out to dinner with Cyndie’s brother, Ben, and his wife, Sara, and then they took us to see The Garcia Project at the Granada Theater in Uptown.
Commemorating the 30th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s passing and marking their 15th anniversary as a band, The Garcia Project is featuring full classic Jerry Garcia Band setlist recreations from 1976-1995 on this tour.
It was definitely a trip back in time. Staying out late to enjoy entertainment at the expense of a full night’s sleep is also something that reminds me of my younger days.
There was no opportunity to sleep in on Saturday morning because I was heading out to meet up with my biking friends in Oakdale, MN, to ride the Gateway and Brown’s Creek Trails to Stillwater.
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It was a good chance to log time on the saddle and catch up with friends who share a history of riding the annual June Tour of Minnesota together. I felt pretty good with the 28-mile effort, but my butt is telling me I need to get more time on the bike to toughen up before the week in the middle of June. Luckily, I have a four-day ride on state trails planned in the Sparta and La Crosse area of Wisconsin with Rich Gordon to solve the time-on-saddle issue.
When I got home from biking, I had time to shower before our friends, George and Anneliese arrived with their trailer and three dogs for a three-day stay.
We kicked off their visit with the first of our ongoing CrossCribb competitions after dinner to pick up where we left off when they used to live with us for a time. The guys defended our honor against the women. A rematch is guaranteed.
I’m loving the interaction with friends, and giving up on my usual routine for a while, although the grass doesn’t stop growing while I’m off having fun. I may need to pull away for an hour or so to save the labyrinth from being swallowed by tall grass at some point today.
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Unexplained Death
I am loath to admit what is daily becoming more apparent. The maple tree that I have been gushing about for the last seven years, transplanted from our woods as a sapling in the fall of 2016, is not showing any sign of life this spring.
We keep hoping beyond hope that the stunted little buds on the branches are just delayed, but the little branch I snapped off a few days ago didn’t offer much hope, with little in the way of green life showing.
My inner pessimist has me thinking my cocky decision to begin annually measuring the circumference of the trunk to track its growth brought on this outcome. What I don’t understand, among the many things I don’t understand, is how and why this is occurring so suddenly. I have watched a lot of trees die in my lifetime, and they usually show plenty of signs they are on the way out.
This is how that maple tree looked ten months ago:
The dang willow tree in the small paddock that I cut almost to a stump and has no reason to have any real future health has sprouted a surprising amount of new branches. If this maple is failing, couldn’t it at the very least pop out a few little attempts to get some nourishment from the sun?
In the spring of 2017, we draped a sheet over the delicate new transplant to protect it from freezing temperatures.
I am so very sad and disappointed. More importantly, I am at a loss as to what happened and what we might have been able to do differently to prevent this sudden failure. When we can muster the mental fortitude to take invasive steps to inspect the roots, we would hope to learn if there is rot. Did it get too much water? Did the lack of snow and hard, hard freezes last winter have this impact?
There are no signs of insect activity or any other visible fungus. All I have is the perception of full leaves last summer, a normal fall change of color and dropping of leaves, and tiny buds that stunted and stopped this spring. It feels like going from all to none.
It sucks. I’m heartsick over it. At this point, I’m not sure I even want to bother trying a fifth time for a tree in the center of the labyrinth garden.
Maybe it’s just dormant and will make a second attempt at leafing out. I could try cutting off the limbs like I did the willow tree and see if that makes it sprout new growth.
Instead, I plan to do nothing. It is what it is. I plan to sink my oodles of tree love into all the other wonderful volunteers around our property that we didn’t need to transplant, but now are being nurtured by protectively clearing around them and frequently monitoring their well-being.
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Available Shade
It’s there when they want it.
At different times throughout the day yesterday, I spotted a horse taking advantage of the shade now available. It’s hard to describe how rewarding that is for me.
It was a relief to get their rain blankets off them first thing in the morning. They were rubbing up against everything around, and I noticed one of the metal latches on Light’s blanket catching on a hay net. Thankfully, it let loose before ripping the net apart. Seeing that, I got my explanation of how in the heck they had ripped down a board the night before.
On my last walk of the night with Asher, I spotted a hay net on the ground. I picked it up and carried it back to the overhang, where I found the board it had been attached to lying on the ground. At the time, I had no idea how or why they had pulled hard enough to yank the six screws that had been holding that board. If that net had snagged on the hardware of one of their blankets, I can easily imagine them using their weight to lurch free. That’s more than enough to pop the board loose.
It’s interesting to imagine the brief drama that must have occurred, and how startling it probably was to the horses, since they were all so serenely hanging out in the vicinity as if nothing was amiss when I showed up.
They were all standing around acting as if there wasn’t a board ripped off the wall for all the world to see. None of them moved a muscle as I picked up the long, heavy board and wove my way around them to take it away.
If I were to show up carrying our Wintervale banner flag, their panicked reaction would make you think it was the scariest thing they’d ever seen.
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Probably Done
Despite the relentless drizzle saturating everything not under a roof yesterday, our contractor, Justin, showed up to complete the framing on the shade sail and remove the ground supports.
It looks a little spider-like due to the funky way I persuaded him to attach the 45° braces above and below the header boards on the four corners. I’m satisfied with the unconventional look, but wish we’d have achieved more stiffness from those additions.
There are two more things we can do to bolster the header boards, but it will take an additional lumber purchase, so I am choosing to wait and take those steps if we discover a need.
As soon as we removed the temporary lower support boards, I took down the barrier to allow the horses full access to the small paddock. They were way more interested in the grass that had been untouched for a couple of weeks than the strange canopy overhead.
Since they’ve watched it go up and probably viewed it in my head the whole time I’ve been imagining it, I suppose it’s not all that new to them.
Horses can be so matter-of-fact sometimes. Weirdly, they can also simultaneously appear somewhat flighty, so figure that one out.
I did some calculating to get an estimate of how long a braid I will need to wrap the 6×6 posts for a span of about a meter to discourage the horses from chewing on the wood or catching their tails or manes in splinters as the wood dries. I’ve completed only a third of what it will take for one post using the cut pieces of poly bale twine we have accrued.
It’s time to up my braiding game. Should have done that a long time ago.
Cyndie made use of several of the hollowed chunks I cut from the fallen maple tree.
They are becoming flower planters. I like! See why I am so smitten with her? Not just things like that, but she lets me make crazy things like the shade sail frame, and then tells me she likes how it looks when it is done.
I’m a lucky guy.
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Weather Wallop
We got smacked to a degree I didn’t anticipate yesterday with a combination of multiple inches of rain in uncomfortably cold temperatures while strong wind gusts blasted us mercilessly. We still had the small paddock closed off, which constrained the horses to having access to only one side of the overhang for shelter.
Just to keep things from being simple to deal with, on Monday, Cyndie got a COVID vaccination booster that had her feeling poorly by yesterday morning. That left it to me to tend to the horses in conditions that were teetering on completely out of control.
The poor girls were shivering desperately and very anxious to get their servings of grain to take their minds off the misery. Serving them became a crazy ad-lib as I tried to maintain some order and control while moving their serving stations on the fly to try giving access out of the rain for each horse.
Thankfully, they were moderately cooperative as they were well aware of the predicament we were all in. After doing my best to give them the bare minimum comforts available in the moment, I took Asher back up to the house for his breakfast.
A short time later, our new person from This Old Horse, Maddy, showed up with doses of dewormer for the horses. She picked up where I left off in trying to find a way to give the horses some advantage against the weather. I joined her and we decided to try moving them inside to the individual stalls.
We got them in, but we couldn’t get Mix to settle down. The other three seemed to figure out they were out of the wind and rain, they had food and water, and no other horse was trying to invade their space. Sadly, I got the impression that Mix was triggered and having a major PTSD reaction to the confinement.
Subsequently, Mix’s prolonged stress, demonstrated in kicking the walls, biting boards, and general flailing about, began to UNsettle the others. We tried changing the horse next to Mix by swapping the positions of Swings and Mia, but it didn’t make enough difference in Mix’s tantruming.
Instead of drying out, Mix was lathering up in her own sweat. We ended up putting blankets on them and letting them back outside after I strung another temporary barrier that at least allowed them access to both sides of the overhang.
A little over a week after setting up fans to cool them in high heat, we now have the horses wearing blankets in the latter half of May.
A windy, rainy, 40°F weather wallop, indeed.
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Relative Something 