Biking and Bacon

The weather as of late has had me riding the fixed gear rather than the fatty.  The trails are getting soft with the daytime temps now reaching near 40°F.  The back roads are getting sandy/muddy so the bike and I come home a mess after riding those.  It isn't me getting dirty that bothers me, but the constant wet sand sticking and grinding away at the bicycle...well that does. So Saturday, Monday and Tuesday had me on the fixed gear.   I will be ditching the studs shortly...I hope.  Maybe todays ride will be on the cross bike.  One thing about that fixed gear, going against the wind that we have had lately on our rolling terrain makes it a bit more interesting.  You can hear the studded tires in the above video.  The sound of frying bacon in a nice hot pan.  What can be bad about that.  Biking and Bacon!!

 

Isn't it a beauty?  No shifting of gears.  No ability to coast.  Just get on and pedal.  And, if you do not pedal, it will let you know.  So much fun to ride!

 

And speaking of beauty, I have been blessed to be able to ride during some fabulous snow falls this year.  These big fat flurries fell during Tuesdays ride.

 

As I pedaled by I see that the sun had melted from the southern exposure bank of the one of the rivers.  I picked that spot for lunch.

 

This above video shows the spot of Tuesdays lunch break.

Lets get outdoors and have some Fun!!

Trail Riding

 The temperature was around the 20°F and I figured the local snowmobile trails would be ideal for the Fat-bike.  

 I was right!!  The riding today was excellent.

 This is by one of the trees cleaned up from a windstorm. That is a mighty big tree to snapped off.  This was from the July 1, 2011 storm.

 They call this road Twin Bridges road...now.   For years and years this road was known as Carlson Creek road and it had make-shift like bridges.  They built the bridges and now its Twin Bridges road.  Imagine that.

 T was out for 3 hours on almost all snowmobile trail like pictured above.  The riding was great with no snowmobile traffic while I was out.  It is the middle of the week though.  Just past the 1:00 mark it started to get a little soft, but still ride-able.

 Lunch spot today...a southern faced little bank on the north side of the trail.

The confluence of the St.Croix and the Eau Claire Rivers in Gordon WI.  Eau Claire on the right.  From here on down to the Mississippi, it is the St.Croix River.

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!

Snowshoe Lunch Date

I started this post last week and am just now getting around to finishing it.  That tells you where my blogging priorities are.  I have put thought to putting this blog behind me. I have another post that I have readied, but not finished yet, so we will see.

  

 I went for a snowshoe during what was suppose to be a terrible storm.  Turned out not so terrible.  hehe

These are trees cut from the path of the North Country Trail that fell during a past wind storm.  

 I was very near this spot the day of that storm in a kayak.  I saw the clouds building and beat it for the landing.  I was home less than an hour when all hell broke loose.  It was the worst wind storm that I can remember.

 It was great to be out with the snow falling and walking very close to the flowing river.

 The trail goes by the Gibson Cabin.  I have blogged a while back on some of the history of this place.  In short it is part of the The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by Congress in 1968...linked.

Today, for me the best to use this cabin was to have lunch.  So, lunch I had.

 It was a break from the usual pb/honey as I packed the stove and cooked up some Wild Rice soup.  That hit the spot.

The picnic table had a little too much snow for my liking.

This was the view from the porch of the cabin and my lunch spot this day. The North Country Trail (linked here) I have blogged about before, but I will say it again.  It is a gem!!

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!

Enjoying Nature

 I recently made another trip to our neighboring township of Barnes to ski their Tomahawk Lake Ski Trail at the town park...linked here.  The last time I was here they hadn't finished grooming.  I wanted to get out here again and this was the day.  The skiing was great.  I now have skied and hiked them.  I think I may have to try bicycling them this summer.

   

 These are the groomers they use for the ski trails. These are pulled by a heavy duty snowmobile, 

 They first pull the the black roller on the right and then go over that with the blue/yellow unit to put the  track down.

 The above is the end result...a nice smooth area with two tracks laid down for classical skiing.  

 Along the trail are resting areas with benches supplied by the Eau Claire Lakes Conservation Club...linked here

 This is a nice little shelter along the trail. I decided to have my lunch here today...another PB/Honey on  multi grain.

 The birds look to be using it as shelter also.  I am guessing during the summer.

 I was the first track across since the drag.  Although I could see where people had skied before because of the indentations in the snow from taking a tumble.  There was more than one tumble that took place on this hill.

I must have worked pretty hard at it because the strap came loose on one of the poles...False, didn't work hard.  Just out enjoying nature on a great day.

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!

Riding the Namekagon Barrens

We woke up this morning to some fog and when the fog lifted, we had a nice covering on the trees.  As I looked out the window the question came to mind..."Where do I ride today?"

I had scoped out Fat-bike riding the Namekagon Barrens last week and today was the day.

The ride today took me into three different Northwest Wisconsin counties.  I had to chuckle when I read the sign above.  Class B highway...hehehe  You would have to know the road.  Highway does not fit!!

The Namekagon Barrens is a wildlife area that is in excess of 5000 acres.  It is just what it says...Barren.  And then some more actually, because there is nothing but wild land for miles bordering most of it.  That means with the combination of public forest land and the barrens itself, it equals miles and miles of bush out here.  This link will take you to more information of this gem.  

This was the lunch spot today. It is called Clemens Creek Pond.

I tried to load a video of the lunch spot but Blogger was not cooperating.  This is a picture heavy post already, so we will see.

The sand is starting to show on some areas.  That is a good sign spring is on the way.  Also a note of good news in my opinion is that Daylight Savings starts in LESS than TWO weeks.  

Signs to get your Barrens.  :-)

I am not sure, but I may have had relatives that attended the school this sign references.  I am thinking so.  Hard to believe there was a school here.  As I said before, this is out in the bush.

I was surprised by the size of some of the hills I rode today...against the wind no less.

I picked up the snowmobile trail and rode that for a ways also.  It was good riding and I met no snowmobiles.  Actually I rode for almost 3 hours today and saw 5 snowmobiles and one truck when I was less than a quarter mile from the finish point.  Great riding today is an understatement.

I will try another video.  This is riding the snowmobile trail.  The temperature rose to about 40°F today and we had a strong ENE wind.  We are expecting mild temperatures for the next week, so the snow will be diminishing along with the Fat-bike conditions. That will be OK though.  I have other bikes to ride and trails to walk. 

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!

Sweetness

 I got out for a sweet ride yesterday.  Those that bicycle know how the wind influences the effort needed to propel the machine forward.  I knew before I left the warmth of home I was in for a good fight on this day.  It was well worth it.  If one waits for the conditions to be ideal, they would spend a lot of time indoors.    

  

 This was the lunch spot on this day along with the obligatory picture of the bicycle of choice today.

 I rode many back roads.  The above picture is from Buckley Island Drive.  This road is a dead end that travels near 5.5 miles back in the bush.  What was great about his road is goes downhill the last 1.5 miles...dead end remember.  This day meant climbing back out against the wind. :-)  You may be able to see that there were tracks of one vehicle that also traveled this road.  They were looking for critter tracks...maybe Bobcat or Coyote.  We had a dusting of snow, so they traveled the road looking for tracks of their prey.

On some roads, there were no tracks.  This ride started with a temp of about 25°F and ended with the temp of 20°F with a strong wind.  A wind to make a person stronger.  It had me out for over 3 hours.  Over three hours of sweetness, that is.

Lets get outdoors and have some Fun!!   

Caching Ski

 I contemplated this morning on which I should do.  Bicycle or Cross Country Ski.  At the last second I decided on the ski.  I decided on a trip to our neighboring township to the east of us, Barnes WI, which has a nice trail system at their town park on Tomahawk Lake.  (click here for park link)  Today the trail had been groomed but not tracked, but it is usually tracked classical.  They first use a roller type affair to flattened it like shown above and then come back to set the tracks.  I came in at the half way point of the process. 

 This was the lunch spot today  (PB and honey on light wheat again)

 This trail post got my attention.  It is severely marked up.

 I knew what had caused the damage without looking, but Mr. Black Bear left proof.  It's a crappy picture, but you can see the hair he left behind.  Among some of the reasons is that they do this to mark scent.  I will link a site with some information on this behavior here. (click)

 At around noon I noticed the snow began to get sticky.  An hour later is when I decided I need to invest in some new skis.  The ones I have are waxless, (note they still need some wax, weird).  I want to get some waxable ones.  I think I may be able to adapt better to the conditions with the waxable. 

 I knew the trail has a big hairpin to it, so I used the cross country part of the skis to actually go cross country to save some of the sticky.

 Today I also added in some Geocaching. A caching ski, one might say.

This was a unique container.  Logged my cache name and moved on. 

Thanks for reading,

AND

Lets get outdoors and have some fun!!