To see the day's Map and Elevation Graph look here: Cycling map and data link (hover on 'Map' button in the upper lefr hand corner and click on Terrain).
The journey begins
Riding down the hill in Gold Medal Park
Our journey begins riding on wet streets and paths from last night's rain. It is a cloudy day at this point. Soon we start riding on the Hiawatha Bike trail and pass by several bike commuters. Our first stop lets us see the art studio called "House of Balls". We're not sure what our reaction is but we must take a photo.
House of Balls
Next we come to this nice mural on a liquor store.
Mural
This mural shows several Minneapolis highlights like the light rail, sport stadiums, Riverview Theater, Spoon and Cherry sculpture, itself, and Minnehaha Falls. So, we ride to Minnehaha Falls.
Minnehaha Falls
Watch the majestic Minnehaha Falls
We ride through southern Twin Cities suburbs and by a refinery owned by the Koch Brothers (who have been fined hundreds of millions of dollars for the environmental damage they've caused), and eventually to Hastings. We hit one detour because of road construction, but mostly an uneventful journey.
Hastings Bridge
We have lunch in Hastings as the sun finally appears in a blue sky. The sun has the effect of making it feel hot and muggy. The dew point hit 70 today (sweat, sweat, sweat).
Hastings Sculpture
The journey out of Hastings follows the Mississippi River Valley and is pretty flat. We have pretty flat roads all the way to the Treasure Island Casino. We decided to skip the casino to avoid having to call this the "Poor Tour." Until now the roads have been relatively flat with low traffic. That changes as we come to a large hill (over 300 feet vertical - see the map) and slowly make our way to the top. There's a nice down hill on the other side.
This brings us to busy US Highway 61 (nice shoulder though) and that takes us to Red Wing. We leave the highway before getting into the heart of Red Wing and ride the Cannon Valley Trail into the center of town. Here we stop for some refreshments.
Red Wing
We get back onto Highway 61 and ride on the shoulder to Lake City. It's a nice shoulder but a busy highway (and it's rush hour). We stop and take a picture of Lake Pepin as we approach Lake City.
Lake Pepin
We arrive at our hotel at 5:00pm.