Posts tagged #Biking

Great River Trail along the Mississippi River

 

Adventure Tuesday

Great River Bike Trail

    W went off biking with his brother starting in La Crosse, WI, and then entered into Minnesota land. I decided to start biking from a small town called Onalaska, along the Mississippi river. This trail takes you through wetlands and beautiful forest, over boardwalk and across small tributary streams flowing into the Mississippi river. 

 
 

    These bridges are so beautiful. And the whole landscape too.

 

    You could definitely start seeing some signs of fall while biking through this landscape. Even though the peak colors don't start until almost 2nd week of October.

 
 

    I am really happy I got to bike this stretch of the trail, and that I didn't venture off into Minnesota land. Maybe next time. 

 
 

    Do you have a favorite fall bike trail?

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Adventure Tuesday, Wisconsin and tagged Great River Trail biking biketrail mississippi river Wisconsin Minnesota border state states Summer Adventures Summer Flod spår 2016 Adventure Trail Macro Rail Trail Bike Adventure Biking.

Elroy Sparta trails and tunnels in Wisconsin

 

Adventure Tuesday

Elroy Sparta Bike Trail

    W and I went biking the Elroy Sparta trail that goes between Elroy and Sparta, hence the name. We ended up starting in a small town called Norwalk, and the plan was to bike all three tunnels. However, my knee decided to not corporate with me and we only did one tunnel. The old conservation department started to convert the old railroad to a trail in 1965. 

 
 

    I think it's pretty cool to bike through a landscape like this, and that it's made so accessible. The trails are in perfect shape. They go through agricultural lands and deep forests.

 
 

The Tunnel/s

    It's pretty cool to see all the design features of the tunnel. These tunnels were built at the end of 1800, in an effort to keep the gradient down for the trains. Apparently they had to install these large doors because of the temperature differences inside and outside the tunnels (warmer inside and colder outside in the wintertime). Which led to the fact that someone had to be stationed there to open and close the tunnel doors as soon as a train came.

 
 

    I guess I never quite thought about the fact that the tunnels would be dark. Next time i will for sure remember to bring my headlamp. The light on my phone did help a little bit to make sure you didn't trip on anything. These tunnels supposedly has some bats in them, but we never saw any. I was thinking that the tunnels would be prime habitat for rats, but no rats. The only animal we saw was unfortunately a dead raccoon :(

 
 

The Creamery

    In Norwalk, at the start of the trail, there is this beautiful old creamery. It looks like it's abandon now but I hope that they wont let it go to waste, because it is really pretty!

 
 

    Have you encountered any cool trails lately?

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Adventure Tuesday, Wisconsin and tagged Elroy Sparta Bike trail biking tunnels Railroad Wisconsin Norwalk Summer Adventures 2016 Trail Rail Trail Bike Adventure Biking.

Bad weather?

 

July 21:

    Ever since I got here it's been hot, like really hot. Ok, I know that a lot of people are used to temperatures up in the 90's and above combined with humidity up towards 90%, me? not so much. I am so happy that we bought an AC right when I got here, because I don't think I would have been able to survive otherwise. I like it cool, I love sweater weather, and this is everything but sweater weather. 

    We seem to have these high pressure storms, where the heat is always combined with some sort of rainstorm. Makes it hard to dress for hot temperatures and rain, I am definitely not used to that. W and I got a metrological weather station for Christmas that measures wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, rain accumulation and rate, and humidity and temperature of course. It's been really cool to have it now when we've had these rainstorms to see how much rain we get. Usually it says "it's raining cats and dogs". Madison is about the same latitude as southern France, so for someone who never lived more south than say the southern part of Canada (cause that is right about where the latitude of Cranfield in UK is, and of course, Stockholm Sweden which is approximately southern part of Alaska, and then of course, Fairbanks Alaska, Madison is far far south. Fairbanks do get hot in the summertime, I mean, we've had weather up in the 90's before, but generally that doesn't last very long, and it's usually very dry, so not the same type of heat that we experience here. I only had one pair of shorts when I moved here, yeah one pair, a climbing pair. Well, and one pair of running shorts. But as you can understand I went shopping for more after a few weeks in this heat. Best money spent in a long time, and I came home with 6 different pairs of shorts. 

 
 

    As I have mentioned earlier Madison lays in (on?) an Isthmus, and we have two lakes on either side, Monona and Mendota. We usually swim in Monona, and while it is definitely not clear, it has been semi OK. Yesterday I biked by the lake and eek what a smell, I was just thinking on the bike ride that it would be nice to maybe go for a swim. But that smell, not fresh lake smell, but yeah, algae. There were people over there swimming and having fun in the water, but I don't know, I am a little skeptic. The first three pictures below are of Lake Monona and the fourth one is Lake Mendota. 

 
Posted on July 24, 2016 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Madison Life, Wisconsin and tagged Summer Madison hot summer Photography with Iphone culture latitude summer days storm summer storm Biking Lake Monona Swimming Bathing rainstorm regnstorm raining utlandssvensk Wisconsin Weather 2016.