Day 27: Sunday, 06/03/18, Minneapolis to Clearwater, Minnesota

Map of Today's ride:



Distance of Today's Ride: 64.9 miles

Trip Total Distance: 1808.3 miles

Elevation Gain:  2126 feet

Riding Time: 5:46 hrs:mins

We started the second phase of our ride this morning. We left Minneapolis around 9:00 am and rode the Mississippi River Trail thru the Twin Cities. The route out of the Twin Cities was fairly easy to follow as Adventure Cycling just released the route we are taking to the headwaters in electronic format around the end of April. When we left this morning, the temperature was in the mid 50's and the sky was cloudy, although it never did rain and it cleared up as the day moved forward. However, we experienced wind between 18 and 25 mph all day long, coming from the NW, exactly the direction our bicycles were headed all day. Due to the wind, we cut our riding day from 79 miles to 64.9 miles. Tomorrow morning, our personal SAG drivers will return us to the point we stopped to continue the ride.

Wayne/Dad and Mindy getting ready to start Phase 2 of our ride to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. This phase will be about 250 miles long and we are planning on taking four "easy" days to complete this section.

This was a typical MRT (Mississippi River Trail) scene as we rode through and out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area this morning.

The further north we travel, the Mississippi River is getting narrower. Also, the boats one observes in this part of the river are all smaller recreational type boats.

We observed this monster house with private lake in its front yard about 35 miles north of Minneapolis. It's owner is a man named John Talbot. Pretty extravagant digs!

This flag shows the strength of the headwind we rode into all day today. It averaged between 18 and 25 mph and caused us to stop our ride about 15 miles earlier than planned. We will start tomorrow from the point where we stopped today.

When not on trails today, this picture is typical of the highways we traveled. This particular highway CR 75 was not busy although the freeway next to it was extremely heavily traveled.