After a good breakfast we said goodbye to our hosts and headed off to the bike trail, there are 4 bike trails that connect to form about 100 miles of trails, from former railways.

The riding on the trails was good, but gets a bit hypnotic at times as it is all pretty similar.

We saw a few touring cyclists and cycled with a couple of them for a little bit.

Our day ended in Sparta, which claims to be bicycling capital of the world on one side of a leaflet and bicycling capital of America on the other side. When we asked in the tourist information why it was so named they said because of the rails to trails that run through the town and a big statue of a guy riding a penny farthing.

We went to the Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bicycle Museum that “offers an intriguing look at both” it was a fairly strange museum with bikes around the outside of the room and Space related stuff in the middle. In the same building there is also the Monroe County Local History Museum. This museum had a lot of information in it most of which I did not read or look at too closely.

Tonight we are camping in a state park I think we are the only people here tonight it is pretty basic but alright.

Today was the day we parted with Jesse. I am not sure how long we have been cycling with him about threeish weeks I think. But it seemed funny to turn our separate ways at a junction. Hopefully we will all be able to meet up when he comes over for the Olympics.

We passed through Lake City the birthplace of water skiing there was not much evidence of the water skiing but who am I to argue about that.

The cycling was good today with a tail wind and flat terrain making it fairly quick going. We cycled into Winona where I brought a new cycle computer which we fitted in the shop there was a good sofa to sit on.

We carried on to our warm showers host were we had a great dinner in the garden before doing a bit more route planning.

I forgot to say that the sunrise this morning was pretty good.

Cycling out of a city is never fun and it wasn’t that fun today. But before we did this we had breakfast with one of the cyclists we met last night in a diner, it was a pretty upmarket one and was good I had this mexican breakfast thing.

After this we headed out of the city navigation was fairly hard and traffic was pretty loud in some places.

We made our way back onto the Adventure cyclists route near hastings, had a little swim in the Mississippi and carried on cycling to a campsite.

Its so humid today and there are lots of Mosquitoes not very nice I am going to go into my lovely hot tent now and try and sleep.

We cycled away from the bunk house and into a city of about 300,000 people it was pretty overwhelming and navigating the trails and bike paths was pretty hard.

We saw the Mississippi it was a pretty big river, we crossed it on a dam, the water was following a lot.

We got to our warmshowers host and had a good shower, and then got fed some hot dogs, before a friend and a friend of a friend came over with ice cream. It was good chatting but now it is time to go to bed.

I think my blog post are getting less and less exciting.

We woke up in the barn, in the night there was a small storm which made us happy to be sleeping inside, even though it didn’t last long.

Coffee eggs and bacon for breakfast followed by a climb of a corn silo was what happened next! It was a great view from the top but a little scary climbing so high.

We set of fairly late and cycled about 45 miles a short day until we got to a bicycle bunk house, a bit like a youth hostel for cyclists. Its really nice and there is a solar power shower which cleaned us up nicely.

I forgot to mention that as we were cycling a long earlier in the day we saw a lot of parked cars and saw that a farm auction sale was going on. We stopped in but as there were a lot of tractors and other farm equipment felt there wasn’t anything there for us and headed on.

As we finished nice and early we did a bit of bike cleaning and general maintenance. So far my bike has been working really well, with very few problems apart from the odd puncture and my chain snapping which was easy fix if a little oily.

The owner of the bunk house chatted with us for a bit and help us plan our onward journey, and gave us lots of maps. He used to be a helicopter pilot and he said that he once fly home and landed behind the house.

Today we cycled along the trail for most of the day we saw four other touring cyclists, and chatted to a few of them. Most of them were doing a similar route to us but in the opposite direction.

The trail was good to ride on, nice and flat and a very smooth surface. We turned off the trail to do a bit of shopping and then to carry on along county road 24 this road was good due to the nice tail wind.

We carried on cycling until we got to our stopping point for the night. Alice’s Attic this is a farm which mostly rented out but one bar has been converted into a venue and antique shop.

We all showered using a hose and Alice kindly feed before taking us on a tour of the farms in the nearby area. We saw some cows in stalls being milked, it was really interesting to see how milk is produced. The farmer had a stole attached to him so he could just sit down wherever and attach the milking machine.

After this farm we went to another with a milking parlour. The parlour looked a lot more advanced with the cows coming and going very quickly, this farm had 400 cows. We went round a few more farms, two which had elk, these were like stronger looking deer.

The farms mainly grow all the food for the cows, a lot of it is corn/maize and hay. The cows mainly stay inside but come out sometimes.

It was good to see these farms and kind of the farmers and Alice to show us around. Farming seems like a pretty intense job working pretty much all the time 7 days a week, a bit different from cycle touring.

Short post today as sleepy. Most of today was spent cycling on a rail trail, old railway line turned into bike path.

The day was fairly uneventful, it looked like it was going to rain but didn’t. We are camped in a park near a lake, and the sunset was pretty good.

I cannot think of anything else that happened, we thought about seeing a demolish derby but it cost a bit too much.

I forgot to mention yesterday that Jesse brought a spork from the internet but in person. We used google maps to find an outdoor store but it was there online section, so we sort of just walked into there office and there were a lot of people at computers and a few things in a warehouse. It was a bit like being inside the internet.

Last night after trying and failing to drink the milk we went out for a beer and burger both were good. I am still impressed and surprised by beer in america. Then to the bike coop where our host volunteers. It was a good space with a lot of bikes.

Today we got up a lot later than normal and had a late breakfast/lunch I suppose this would be call brunch.

We set off at 1pm and managed to cover 60 miles by 6pm. Then things slowed down we did shopping slowly camped and now cooked fairly slowly.

The countryside changed a bit today it became more rolling hills and lakes rather than being just flat.

Today was pretty similar to yesterday and the days before, cycling with a tail wind and side wind across flat terrain.

We arrived in Fargo a pretty big place compare to the one bar towns we have been travelling through. It had a good bike shop, a great health store were I brought some soap that Jesse recomended from a hippy that started shooting guns aged six.

We then headed to where we are couch surfing tonight. We decided to try and do the gallon of milk challenge. One gallon of milk in one hour without being sick for another two ours it was impossible. I drank just under half a gallon, and felt pretty bad I have not been sick yet though. It was a tough challenge. The couchsurfers house is pretty cool with lots of pictures and bike related things.

Last night it was humid and there were loads of mosquitoes.

Today’s ride was good, relatively flat and the majority of the miles with a good tail wind.

Not much happened until we got to Cooperstown where everybody seemed to say hello, and ask us a lot of questions. It was the most friendly town we had been to and seemed pretty busy in a good way.

We headed out of town a little way and came across the Minuteman missile silo site. There was a lot information about it all. There were about 1000 of these missile around america in the height of the Cold War. It was a pretty strange place in a way or the idea of it was pretty strange, the missiles were stupidly powerful.

After this little bit of sight seeing we head on to our destination for the night. Page, this town seemed to be very small but in fact had a lot of things going on a cinema, only open at the weekend, and currently being repaired maybe in time to watch big cat adventure this weekend but it was advertised as tentative.

Its surprising that a town this small can support a cinema but a lot of bigger towns in england don’t have cinemas.

The grocery store was well stocked and they unlocked the toilets at the baseball field where we can camp its pretty good but there are a lot of flies.