A Great Gravel day!!

 I rode one of my favorite rides today...plus a little extra.  It was 40 plus miles of gravel, plus a little tiny bit of blacktop.

 Some sand

 Some two rut roads.  Say, why is it that a person can ride miles keeping the tires in a narrow tire track, or ride a fog line on the highway, but yet have second thoughts about riding a skinny bridge on a single track?

 Rode some nice two track today also.

 This was the lunch spot today.  Miles from nowhere. The metal object in the background that I used as a chair/table is what makes the body of water.   It contains a small dam.  They lift the lid to put in or take out small beams that hold the water back to control and attain the level they desire.  A level most likely set by the Department of Natural Resources.

   

 Bounty Road

 Oscar was a bear hound that the owners used for chasing and treeing Black Bear for hunting purposes.  One bear took a stand so here lies Oscar.

 I rode by here yesterday and the grader was sitting here.  Today when I went by it was gone and a pickup truck was sitting there.

 If I wanted to stay on the gravel I would be riding some freshly graded road.

 I figured I knew where they were using the grader today and had prepared myself mentally for such a thing before I arrived at the freshly graded road.  Yep, I was right.  After 30 miles I now faced 5 miles of soft stuff...for now!  

 Back on the regular gravel.

 Oooops...I didn't expect this though.  It wasn't bad though as it didn't last long.

Mile 36 left my Camelbak empty with 5 more miles to go.  Ever notice how light they are when you start sucking air through the hose.  It's like an instant revelation that it's light.  It's not the first time.  I don't notice it getting light until IT IS. It suddenly becomes a Camelbak Lite!!

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!

Bicycle Caching

 I had the mountain bike out for a recent geocache trip.  I have combined caching and bicycling quite often and I do enjoy it.  Actually twice last week.  It is two of my favorite pass times now.  I am a relative newbie at geocaching and have found it to be great fun. I plan on getting out for about a 35 mile mountain bike ride this week to plant some caches. This will be my first venture into owning (placing) caches. 

 For those that don't know of geocaching I will try to briefly explain it.  Mind you that I am a newbie, so I may miss things or might not have a full grasp on the sport.  This is a definition from their website linked here. Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.  In the above picture, a person or persons hid this cache and registered it with the website providing information of cache and its coordinates.  I had loaded it into my GPS receiver and found it.  After I found it, I signed my name on a log contained in the cache.  Oh...this is just too much to for a newbie to explain.  If you don't already know about geocaching and want to know, check out the website.

This is an example of the trails I was riding on this day.

Lets get outdoors and have some FUN!! 

Another Great Ride!!

We drove to Cloquet MN Saturday for a ride with these folks. Left is Brandon, Roger (me) in the middle and Doug on the right.  It was a 40 mile plus ride.  Cloudy and cool.  Company excellent!!  We left Cloquet, headed over to Scanlon, on to Carlton, down to Wrenshall, and then headed east past Scotts Corners over to Mahtowa (home of TJ's Country Market...famous brats) and then headed back into Carlton via the Munger trail and back to Cloquet.  For those that read the last post, this ride was very wind friendly.  It was a triangle ride and we started against the wind, had a cross wind and sailed back home.  I do most of my riding alone.  These last two weekends riding with company is...well...priceless.

We arrived back in Cloquet and went in and visited Brandon and his family.  They have since increased the size of the family by one!  Janice was able to visit more than I, as we were riding.  They had asked us to stay for supper but we had made plans ahead.  I wished later we would have canceled the other plans and stayed.  It looked delicious and later received a text stating so.  But, the above picture is one of them participating in Forts Folle Avoine Rendezvous last year near Danbury, WI.  He invited me to dinner next year while they are there and we intend on taking them up on that.  Great Dad, Mom and children!

Lets get outside and have some FUN!!