I headed up to Glenwood on Friday evening in preparation for a ride called the Tour de Prairie Lakes centered around town. The local chapter of the Habitat for Humanity organization has hosted this ride for the past five years – both as a way to showcase the county and the raise some money for the group. Part of the ride included a stop-off at the newest project – a house being built in Villard – so it was great to both experience a ride and see some of the money put to good use.
Before we even made it into Glenwood for the start of the ride, we knew that the early stages of the ride would be less-than-scenic due to the heavy fog that greeted us on Saturday morning.
I was joined by my brother, Tim, for the ride. We had several options for the route and chose the one that was the longest and covered large parts of Pope County. It was marketed as a 70 mile route, but we found our actual distance was a little short as I’ll describe further in this post.
The ride kicked off from the Glenwood City Park (near the rebuilt Lakeside Ballroom – which I played at many times during my youth) and was set for leaving on the route between 7:30am and 8:30am. Since both my brother and I were staying out at my dad’s house – a few short miles out of town – we decided to ride directly from my dad’s place to the ride start. This would add a total of 6 miles to the overall ride, but that didn’t seem that big of a deal when the whole ride is well over 60 miles (10% more?). Thus, to hit the route as early in the day as possible, we got everything together and heading out shortly after 7:00am.
Looking out toward the lake from the city park, you could never imagine that there was a massive lake right past the dock. The fog and smooth water surface played a lot of tricks to the eyes all morning as the first part of the day’s journey included a 21 mile loop around Lake Minnewaska.
As I left the garage, I commented that I “hoped my tires held up for the duration of the ride” – knowing that they were displaying some signs of wear. This proved a poor choice of words as my brother hit a rock and tore a whole in his tire’s sidewall within about 50 feet of hitting the highway. As sucky as a flat tire can be, we were pretty lucky to have it happen so close to my dad’s house. My brother had his second bike with him and was able to steal a tire from the other bike and we were back on the road into town within about 5 minutes.
On the way into town, it became evident that the early part of the ride was going to be shrouded in fog, as a thick layer of clouds were hovering right off the lake surface. It was a little bit of a surreal experience, because the lake was perfectly calm resulting in a visual phenomenon where you could not see a horizon line between the lake and the clouds/sky. Any early morning fisherman on boats appeared to be simply floating in a white suspension.
Although we were participating in the “Tour de Prairie Lakes”, there were no prairie lakes to be seen for the entire morning with the heavy fog making it hard to see the ends of the handlebars, let alone many miles of beautiful shoreline..
We soon rolled into town and checked in at one of the picnic shelters in the park. Earlier in the year, my brother and I rode the Minnesota Ironman ride – which is a rather popular and substantial ride in Minnesota. At the Ironman ride, every rest-stop was complete with healthy foods – various organic, all-natural refreshments. At the Glenwood stop, they provided donuts, bismarks, and homemade cookies. We both avoided the temptation, knowing that it is not a comfortable ride to start the day with a bunch of donuts sitting deep inside your belly.
The official map had the bikers rounding the lake in a counter-clockwise direction and sent eveyone on the newer bikepath that was added to Country Road 24 in the last several years. Unfortunately, this path also takes riders away from the lakeshore and provides little in terms of scenic views. Instead of following this path directly, we decided to stay close to the shoreline and kept along the Nouth Lakeshore Drive on the first leg into Starbuck. Although, with the heavy fog, there was little to be seen as visibility was limited to a few dozen feet all around us.
The air was so thick with moisture and the temperatures cool enough that everything was wet on my bike from the condensation. My arms were soaked, water was dripping down from my helmet, and my handlebar tape was sopping. It was as humid as the natural conditions would allow.
On the way into Starbuck, we ran into my old band teacher from high school – Jerry Stein – who was manning the intersection where the bike path intersected the main highway in the area. It’s fun to see the adults from your youth and catch up, if only briefly. We keep on down the road and soon made a quick stop at the Starbuck park for refeshments.
At the Starbuck stop, they appeared to be a little over-zealous with their food purchases and had an assortment that could feed somewhere between 300 and 400 people (there ended up being around 80 people that road some/all of the tour). They had enough bananas that every single rider could have eaten three of them and still had some left over. They also provided a meat and cheese tray – which I found to be an wonderful idea and nibbled from it before clipping into the pedals and heading back on the road.
We finally started to see some blue sky and more than a few hundred feet around us by the time we pulled into Glenwood after completing the 21 mile route around the lake.
The loop around the lake ended with little of note – except that the only time we could actually see the lake was the few last moments before returning to the Glenwood park prior to the next leg.
The next portion of the ride included traversing the newly-built bikepath to Villard – a small town about 10 miles out from Glenwood. If you’ve been to the area before, you likely realize that Glenwood sits in a fairly deep valley formed long ago by glaciers during the most recent ice age. For us cyclists, this meant that we needed to climb some hills to get out of the valley and up to the flats before joining the trail. My brother and I again chose to go “off-route” and took the steep road behind the Barsness Park to get up “Soo Hill”. Taking that road was like taking bad tasting medicine – where it is best just to suffer quickly and get it over at once. Thus, the road is VERY steep, but allows to get all the elevation behind you quickly.
We found the trail to Villard and were soon on a flat, straight and steady ride to the neighboring town. As an old railroad bed, the trail is very easy for any class of cyclist and allowed for us to maintain a steady 18-19 mph pace.
Since the bike path into Villard was once an old railroad track, the route was straight, narrow, and void of hills – the perfect conditions for an easy bike ride.
Pulling into Villard, we were directed to a reststop that was located at the most recent build for the Habitat for Humanity organization. It appeared to be a nice, single-family home that was about midway through its construction. While gathering a few refreshments (and snacking on some more homemade cookies), one of the new residents of the home stopped by to volunteer. She seemed pretty excited to get into the house and was genuinely thankful for the organization’s help to make it happen. It was good to see Habitat for Humanity at work and meet someone who is able to take advantage of the community’s generosity. I was happy to be a small part of it by contributing my entrance fee for the ride.
While at the Villard stop, we picked up an additional rider – a women named “Shirlie” – who was going at about the same pace as my brother and me. This turned out to be a nice addition, as the three of us were able to increase the pace over the second half of the ride and knock the miles off rather quickly.
Shirlie was a good rider and helped us keep a pace that averaged around 20 mph in the middle sections of the route – admittedly faster than my brother and I would have maintained on our own.
From Villard, we headed straight west along some back county road until we came upon Lowry. This town is pretty small and it was no surprise that the rest stop for the event was actually at the main bar in the city called “The Hatchery”. It was probably the only place where they could organize access to bathroom facilities, so it’s understandable. But, incorporating a cycling event with a stop-off at the local bar still seemed a little contradictory.
The last leg of the journey headed south toward Starbuck, before cutting back to Glenwood along Country Road 24. By this time, we were all feeling the distance in our legs and were glad that the miles were coming to an end. The fog had lifted, but the temperatures were beginning to rise and the humidity was started to become noticed. We rolled into Glenwood right around 12 noon – about 4 hours from when we started.
Here are the stats loaded into the Garmin site:
Originally, the ride was billed to be 70 miles – although I only tracked 62 miles, including the out-and-back to my dad’s place. I think we would have needed an extra leg out to the Glacial Lakes Park to hit the full 70, but neither my brother or I felt bad about cutting it a bit short. Our moving duration came in at 3.5 hours and we averaged just over 17 mph even with all the starts and stops. This was pretty good, considering that the Minnesota Ironman ride we did earlier in the Spring averaged only 14 mph. For Saturday’s ride, the conditions were perfect with little-to-no wind, so the 17 mph average reflects nice cycling weather and was to be expected.
The last hour of the ride was bathed in sunshine and we were glad to call it quits before the temperature rose and made any work outside a laborious task.
Overall, the Tour de Prairie Lakes was a success (from a rider’s perspective) and I hope it can continue. This was the fifth year for the event – but 80+ riders isn’t much to help pay for the support given to make it happen – even with volunteers to man the stations. It is definitely a great way to feature the entire Pope County and illustrate how great it is to cycle in the area. I’ve put many miles on those roads during my youth and welcome others to share in the same experiences I had.
