We visited Lanesboro, Minnesota
When I came to visit my relatives in Minnesota, I made sure they knew I was a complete bike freak and that one of the reasons we were going to Minneapolis was to enjoy its Biking Infrastructure. We did bike in Minneapolis (which I will write about later). We were also told to visit Lanesboro, on the Root River bike trail system.
Damn, Lanesboro is good!! I should have come here with an actually good bike! I would come back, I think!
We rented pretty-mid bikes from a local shop and headed out on the trails. They did not give us helmets, and the trail is so flat and so filled with slow families that we decided to give it a shot without helmets. Here's me biking along the trail, helmetless, in the woods, on a Fuji-brand dutch bike I could barely hit 10 MPH on:
The Root River trail system is a rails-to-trails bike path connecting several extremely small towns. Lanesboro is right in the middle. We also biked to Whalan, northeast of Lanesboro. Whalan might be the smallest town I have ever walked around on foot. It was astonishingly tiny. This is what it looks like:
Here's a picture of the Whalan Depot, the main/only?? business open in Whalan, which had about 15 cyclists milling around it at all times:
We spent about thirty minutes here reading informational signs about the town. The signs were really good. Apparently, in the past, Whalan was home to small-town businesses like "blacksmith" and "restaurant" and "butcher" and "barber shop," but also to a business which provided "elevators."
There was also an early phone directory for the town, which listed all the phone "numbers" for the residents. They were kind of morse code, requiring you to dial your target with either "long" or "short" rings using a crank device:
All the small towns on the route now seem heavily dependent on the recreational cycling business. They all have signs showing this large cartoon diagram of the surrounding region. The bike trail is the black line; each city is depicted alongside something it uniquely provides the region. Whalan, apparently, provides pies. (The pie shop was closed for the season.)
One town's 4th-of-July celebration is depicted as an exploding stick of dynamite:
We then turned around and headed back towards Lanesboro. Our bikes were so badly suited for long distance riding that I was thinking ten miles was all I could handle. The temperature, however, was completely perfect. If I'd been there on my personal bike I could have easily done 20 or 30 miles. It's so flat and nice!! Every 5-to-10 miles, there's a tiny town with a tiny store! These are ideal biking conditions. When you've got treats waiting for you every 5 miles on an almost completely flat route, I think most people could do a 20-to-30-mile day, genuinely. All you gotta do is stay fed and hydrated.
It was like an alternate world where towns are all oriented toward the bike path and all people are biking and cars are for losers. It was incredible. Because it was the weekend, the whole trail was packed, but not in a bad way - everyone was going a pretty reasonable recreational speed, and we were too, and people were sharing the trail politely. We did not often run into people trying to make Strava KOMs. When we got back to Lanesboro, it was turning into later afternoon, and people were finishing their rides. It seemed like there were a couple hundred cyclists rolling around the town looking for snacks.
Astonishingly, we ran into my friend's step-grandmother on the street, whom I haven't seen since I officiated my friend's wedding in LA last year. She is also a cyclist. A crazy coincidence, but maybe not so crazy if you consider how popular this place seems to be with Minnesotan cyclists. I guess this is the place you should go if you want to increase your chances of seeing any given Minnesotan cyclist??
We turned our bikes in to the shop and then went on a walk to see the local sights. Basically, that's this dam:
It's an interesting dam!!!
We then drove back to where we were staying. This entire region of Minnesota looks roughly like this:
Nearly everything we could see was corn and soybeans.
You should come here!! I suspect that a lot of the people visiting were from the Twin Cities and were camping nearby or staying in a bed and breakfast. We were lucky enough to be able to drive back and stay in Rochester.
I love weird corners of the world where bikes are in charge and cars are just invisible. I get to enjoy that pretty frequently on the beach in LA... but this was my first opportunity in a long time to enjoy this kind of thing in a green, leafy, wet place. I'm jealous!!