Bugs, tunnels, and owls.

We were almost entirely on the four trails today. From Onalaska to Lacrosse, we rode the remainder of the Great River Trail. Lacrosse is linked to Sparta by the Lacrosse River Trail. It's mostly flat and lightly traveled. So lightly that one boy, riding toward us beside a friend, never looked to see if there might be an oncoming trike tandem on a collision course. We had to scream at him to get back on his side. Less trouble were the countless goldfinches in perfect summer plumage. They were quick to fly into the bushes. Summer flowers in yellow, purple and white colored the prairie sections, and groves of trees provided welcome shade. The riding surface was so slow that we stopped a couple times to check for flat tires. When we reached the Elroy-Sparta trail, with its smoother surface and no center stripe of weeds, our speed picked up. We tried wearing one eye patch as we approached the tunnels. It was strange to be able to see inside with the dark-adapted eye but to be almost blind with the eye that had been exposed to the bright sun outside. On the last trail, the 400 (named for a train that used to make the trip from St. Paul to Chicago. in 400 minutes ) we were glad to be wearing anti-bug hats. The deerflies kept pace with us, even at more than 10 MPH. Last year they made us miserable, but the hats prevented almost al the bites. We were running late coming into Reedsburg. The rabbits were out on the trail, and in the trees the great horned owls were watching them. We saw two great horned owls and one smaller owl.

We arrived in Reedsburg after dark -- but anyone who knows our bikes would not wonder whether we would be visible. we had enough lights that people who saw us turned around and followed us to ask about the rig.

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Minor editing to fix an "auto-correct" from the Droid smart phone that turned a horned owl into a "hotbed" owl.  I also realized that I edited the previous post to cover much of the same information that we managed to upload from the Droid phone during a very disrupted night in which we had to change rooms because of a faulty fire alarm system;  I'm just leaving the posts as they are and hope that the duplication won't trouble anyone.