Tour de Hort

As our gardening season winds down in the autumn, Mother Nature gives us the grand finale; Maples in all their glorious fall colors! There are so many beautiful trees with bright fall color but none can rival the Sugar Maples. Even among Sugar’s there is a hierarchy and Fall Fiesta ™ ranks among the best.

Jo wrote up all of the daily observations during the trip, staying up late many nights, for which I am very grateful. However I can't resist the opportunity to make a few additional comments, so here goes!

Due to the weather forecast predicting upper 90's we left Forest Lake at 7:25 a.m. accompanied by Terri McEnaney, Alex Kane, Jeff Metzger, Tom Michaels, Rob McKim and Tim Power and then later joined by our son Mike and grandson Alex. This is the first day that we had a stiff headwind so progress was a bit slow. However everyone finished in a blaze of glory biking up our driveway and breaking througn the ceremonial ribbon. Well done everyone!! The great day was topped off by a real fun pig roast in our back yard. Many members of the MNLA and our family were present to toast the bikers. We are now at around $46,00 raised and are confident that we'll reach the goal of $50,000. It's been a wonderful ten days on the road! We really enjoyed every day and especially enjoyed the cameraderie of our friends who biked with us.

What a surprise the weather is! We left around 7 a.m. to beautiful overcast skies and 69 degrees temp. I finally got to wear the sweatshirt that I brought along for the supposedly cool Duluth weather (104 degrees on Friday!).

Grand Rapids -- Birthplace of Judy Garland (Frances Gum)
Today we were joined by Tom Michaels, Horticulture Department head at the U of MN, who keeps in shape by biking three times a week from his Stillwater home to the St. Paul campus. The entire day was spent on the Mesabi Trail with the exception of a few three mile sections that are yet not completed. It's a beautiful trail traversing through the Mesabi Iron Range. We saw lots of red roads, deep mine craters, and many mountains of "spoil" from the mines. The trail was lined with lovely flowers -- tansy, birds foot trefoil, fireweed and the ubiquitous spotted knapweed. Believe it or not the bikers seemed to thrive on the hot temps ending the day in Mountain Iron -- 100 degrees in the shade! There was no road kill along the way although Tom was "attacked" by a red squirrel who ran off to live another day. Four deer were seen plus two cotton tails and a snowshoe hare but not the bear that a fellow biker told us he had seen. Did you know that the Greyhound Bus Company originated in Hibbing? There is the Greyhound Bus Museum situated at the beginning of the bike trail in Hibbing. When Hibbing began in the 1880's they had no idea that the largest area of iron ore in America was beneath the town. As mining progressed it was necessary to move the houses, stores, etc. to another location. Some enterprising persons provided transportation for the people to get to work, church, etc. and that was the start of the bus company! We drove to Duluth from Mountain Iron arriving around 5 p.m. and the temp was 104 degrees! Several rainstorms came through in the early evening lowering the temps but the humidity was very high. Doug Blackmore of Amity Creek Landscaping invited us and several nursery people to a fun picnic at Enger Tower Park -- a beautiful city park with gorgeous flower gardens. Great visiting and yummy food made for a very pleasant evening.

Another early 6:45 a.m. start--perfect biking weather all day although we did finish the day with temps in the 90's. Starting out with flat terrain (farming country--monster fields of soy beans and small grains) we transitioned to beef cattle, hay, forests and lakes.

Off to an early start (6:45) and we were joined by Lane Rutherford who is our sales representative in this area. She biked for an hour and then we headed NW on our way to Fergus Falls. It was a fine day for biking--cloudy with temps in the low 80's. All along the way the crops looked very good. Corn and beans were the most prevalent but later in the day small grains were replacing them. A great deal of restored native prairie was seen all day. The dreaded wild parsnip was noticed sporadically in the Hancock area and much spotted knapweed also was noted. Two more corn company names appeared--

We took advantage of our welcome rest day by touring the Nature Conservancy's prairie preserves running along side Lac Qui Parle, goose capital of the upper midwest. The Chippewa Preserve and Plover Preserve are great examples of the beauty and diversity found in native prairies. Besides the many lovely wildflowers John was surprised by a Northern Grasshopper mouse which hopped as well as ran! Numerous pelicans were seen on the lake.

We got an early start (7 a.m.) and really enjoyed the cool temps as it got in the high 80s later in the day. Granite Falls was our half-way stop so we took a short rest at a small park along the Minnesota River. A sign proclaimed the fact that Henry Hill founded the town in the mid-1800s and he built the first of everything! This area's granite rocks are the oldest rocks in the world--3,8000,000,000 years old! Today we passed through many small towns-- towns that we've heard of but have never visited. It's very sad that most of these little towns are quite depressed and have no stores, etc. remaining. However the towns that are county seats look good. Some of the things we noted along the way were: two turkey vultures enjoying a cat dinner, two deer in the beans, road kill skunks, possum, and rooster, a red-tailed hawk who hop-scotched from electric pole to electric pole in front of us for about a mile, quite a few meadowlarks, many pelicans and cormorants around a lake. Gas is $2.99 and E85 ethanol is $2.59.

The crops are looking great except around Benson which is suffering from lack of rain. Corn and beans continue to dominate the farm crops but we did see some sugar beets, alfalfa and wheat. The Montevideo area appears to be the thistle capital of MN in contrast with yesterday's areas where they were being mowed. We have never seen(or heard of) so many different seed corn companies--names like Wensman, Asgrow, Pioneer, Cropplan, DeKalb, Northrup King, Golden Harvest, Crow, Midwest, Ziller and Munson. This is the first day that we were delayed by rain. A pretty good shower with thunder and lightning passed by around 3 p.m. giving Gordie and John a 15 minute rest in the van. We're writing this report at dinner and Gordie just took his pulse. It's 44! Eat your heart out, Tim!

How can the weather continue to be so nice? Another sunny day with a good tailwind although by the end of the day the temp was 94 degrees! The gently rolling terrain was marked with many drainage dithes. The road kill count is mounting--2 pheasant hens, a flattened (but unpainted) possum, 2 skunks and 1 racoon. Ever since we left Cannon Falls the crops have looked strong except for a mini-drought area around Hanska. The dominant crops are corn and beans thanks to the government assistance programs. Let's hope the next Farm Bill includes more support for conservation efforts. We have seen only a smattering of alfalfa, oats, wheat and sugar beets and we haven't seen any wild parsnips since Mankato. The counties are mowing thistle to reduce these numbers. We had a great example of Minnesota nice today. I stopped at a farm home to see if the bikers could rest on their shady lawn. She of course said "yes" and when the fellows arrived she brought out Gatorade for all plus a $20 donation to the MNLA cause! She and her husband were so interested in the trip and she knew all about Honeycrisp apples as she worked at an orchard in Madison Lake. It's incidents like this that really make the trip so much fun! A really great day was made even better by attending the very nice picnic provided by the Buckley family of Redwood Falls Nursery. Around 30 nursery friends attended and a good time was had by all. Our good biker friends Tim, Stan and Paul left us but some of them will join us again in Duluth or Forest Lake.

After a filling blueberry pancake breakfast the group (Gordie, John, Tim, Stan, Paul and Jim Luby)left at 9:30--destination Mankato. It was another beautiful day--temps in the low 50's to low 80's later in the day.

PRELUDE
To prepare for this bike ride, Gordie biked approximately 1050 miles! He started doing 35 miles twice each week and progresseed to two 80 miles trips. Now the "easy and fun" part starts!