More about biking Wisconsin

Bike route 65811 - powered by Bikemap 

The first day of our trip to Wisconsin started with the ride from Minneapolis to Stillwater that is seen in the previous post. We stopped for a picnic lunch beside the Stillwater lift bridge, which had just come back into service a couple days earlier. After a long wait for a boat to pass under the bridge, we crossed in slow and heavy traffic. Most of the cars went up the main road, but we took the very steep route up County Road E and then continued quite straight across St. Croix County. After the first big hill, there were a few moderate hills, but nothing really difficult. We would have continued much further east before turning south, but a detour on County Road E led us to change our plans. A small but intense thunderstorm had overtaken us, and we didn't want to explore a detour of unknown length going away from our planned direction of travel, so we changed course. We didn't know where to stay in the little towns north of Interstate 94, but a friendly local cyclist directed us to a pleasant little motel in Woodville, where we could lock the trikes under an overhang directly outside our door. A disadvantage of traveling the quiet country roads in Wisconsin is that there are very few places to eat or sleep along the way. We had packed enough food and drinks, so we didn't go hungry, but we had some worried moments before we located a room for the night.