It really was a rest day. I slept in late and just hung out at the campsite. We should have gone into Minneapolis but I was just so tired that I needed to stay put.
I got a little work done but mostly I just rested my legs by the pool.
Tomorrow we head southeast to the small town of Canyon Falls, MN. A 105 km ride. I will ride around the southwestern outskirts of Minneapolis and then head south. The big challenge tomorrow will be the heat. The expected high will be 36C. I am not sure I can ride that far in that kind of temperature. I will try to get a really early start to get as much done before it really starts to heat up.
It looked like a pretty easy day on the map but it turned out to be a real grind. I broke a spoke yesterday and didn't have a replacement so I had to wait until the bike shops opened at 10 am this morning. By 11 am, Revolution Cycle and Ski had my rear wheel fixed and straightened yet again. I bought a couple of extra spokes to fix the inevitable additional breaks that I will likely see in the coming weeks.
Up until the last couple of days, I've ridden mostly on the major highways. In many cases, they were the only paved roads possible. Now some of the highways are no longer legal for me to ride on and and I wouldn't want to anyway. Often, there are "Old Highways" that run almost parallel to the interstate highways that are much calmer.
The ride today was only 71 km but it was hard. It has become a lot hillier but the biggest issue was the wind. A head on wind at about 25 km/h. This was the third day in a row of significant headwinds and I think that I was just worn out. So tomorrow, I'm taking a day off. We are just outside of Minneapolis, the largest 
city that we have run into so far on this trip and this day off will give us a chance to explore a bit.
We were invited to dinner at the home of a friend of a friend, Michael (and his dogs, Spike & Petie). He made us a wonderful dinner and we had some great conversations.
After saying goodbye to Lloyd and Gent, we went back to Alexandria to start the day where I had turned off of the Central Lakes Trail. This was my second day of almost exclusively riding on this trail system. It is such a wonderful way to see the little towns and countryside in this part of Minnesota. Too bad more of my travels could not be like this!
At the start of the day, my legs were still smarting from yesterday's cycling. The winds really take a lot out of you. Once I got into a rhythm, my legs settled down. There was a lot of wind but it was mostly cross winds and the trail was protected a fair bit by trees and hills.
There was a lot of traffic on the trail today. (Sunday bikers :-) It was quite a wide variety of cyclists, rollerbladers and walkers. I even saw a few cyclists with helmets so they must sell them here. There was even a couple of deer, eating the young corn.
Just before reaching Avon, I started to notice a wobble in my rear wheel. Those Moose Jaw pot holes are coming back to haunt me. I had broken a spoke. I don't have any extra spokes so when I caught up to Rochelle in Avon, I switched over to her bike to finish the day. I need to get some new spokes and repair the wheel in the morning. This is the second broken spoke and is likely to happen fairly often due to those pot holes. I will have to stock up on them. I am hoping to get to St. Johns without having to have that wheel rebuilt!
As I approached Saint Cloud the bicycle trail ended and I reluctantly returned to Highway 75 that took me through town. I stopped at a Pilot truck stop to have a shower before finishing the day at yet another Walmart.
Tomorrow, we travel to Minneapolis, roughly 100 km away. It will be a late start because all the bike shops open at 10am. I am not sure yet where we will stay as we have a number of people to see and things to do in Minneapolis! We also have to start doing some more detailed planning beyond Minneapolis.
We woke up to the unexpected sounds of rain on VanGo. I decided to sleep in a bit to see if the weather would improve and it did. By the time I got going, at around 10 am, the sun was shining and it was getting warm. I rode through Fergus Falls to the beginning of an amazing paved bike path built on an abandoned rail bed.
This the Central Lakes Trail that eventually turns into the Lake Wobegon Trail although I have not gotten into the Wobegon section yet. The trail has a really smooth and wide surface that makes for a pleasant ride. While it has stop signs at most road crossings, there are long sections that are uninterrupted. This part of the trail goes through rolling hills, farmland and winds around many lakes.
Because of its former use as a rail line, this trail goes through several towns along the way. Often the entry into a town is the back side of its industrial operations, providing a much different perspective that you would get on the road. Many of the towns have built nice shelters and rest spots along the trail.
The day was very hot and there was a constant southeast wind, a direct head wind, until mid afternoon when it turned into a south wind. Once the wind switched, the many tree-lined sections of the trail provided some relief from the wind. At Alexandria, we stopped at Big Ole, a huge Viking warrior statue.
From Alexandria, I left the trail behind and rode south on highway 29 towards Glenwood. Of course this was back into head winds again. I finally reached Glenwood at 6:30pm.
We had a great dinner and visit with our friend Lloyd and his son Gent (our Godson! :-).
The day started off with something that you don't see every day. Two Fargo Police cars were just a few campsites down from ours. The police were watching as a young guy packed up his tent and stuff. All were gone when I passed by there about 10 minutes later. I wonder what he did.
It was a really nice ride today. It was a cloudless day and quite warm. I left Fargo via a pedestrian bridge over the Red River into Moorehead, Minnesota and then cycled along the river for a while before heading over the Old Highway 52. Along the way south, Patrick, a local cyclist, caught up to me and we had a nice chat while we rode together.
I passed through the towns of Sabin and Barnsville with miles of corn in between. 
The countryside started to role gently after Barnsville and everything seemed to be a little greener. As on many other days, I had a constant escort of red shouldered black birds.
This route paralleled the I-84 highway and I could see the vehicles on the I-84 for most of the trip. Because of that, it was rare to see a car on the much slower highway 52. That made for a very peaceful ride.
I covered the 92 km to Fergus Falls in a little less than 4 hours. We had a look around Fergus Falls and found the Veterans Memorial Park that had lots of trees to shade us from the hot midday sun and gave us a nice quiet view of the river for us to set up our "office" for the afternoon.
The local campground was booked up for the night so after we had a BBQ in the park, we packed up and headed for the local Walmart to setup for the evening.
Tomorrow, will be interesting. About 70 of the 100 km will be on the Central Lakes Trail between Fergus Falls and Alexandria. It is an abandoned railway bed that has been paved as a cycling path. It should be great ride without constant sound of cars going by.
It was great to get back on the bicycle today. It's been too long and I've been itching to move forward. The terrain was very flat and a fairly steady cross wind was blowing as I travelled south from Grand Forks.
The shoulders were generally pretty good except for one section where they had decided to create rumble strips that covered about 80% of the shoulder. Combine that with bushes encroaching from the ditches and it made for an interesting obstacle course for about 20km.
Rochelle missed me when I had stopped at a visitor center and ended up almost at Fargo before she realized it. So we decided to just meet at the campground. As a result, food for the day was limited to a few protein bars and I even ran out of water just as I was entering Fargo. That is the first time that I've emptied my 3 litre hydration system on a day. I guess it's getting hotter.
Instead of taking the highways around Fargo to reach our campsite, I decided to go through town. It was a much more interesting ride although I had to constantly stop and figure out where I was.
Our campsite is quite a nice spot at the bend of the Red River.
With a weekend coming up, we are going to have to be more careful about getting a place to camp. This campground was quite booked up and one that we called for tomorrow night is already full. I guess the summer camping season is in full bloom!
Now that we've reached an area that is more populated, there are more options for routes to take from one place to another. It looks like I can reach Fergus Falls tomorrow via smaller roads instead of taking the interstate. The following day, it looks like I should be able to spend most of the day on a paved abandoned railroad. I am looking forward to that!
Another quiet day, this time in the Grand Forks RV Park. The day started out cloudy and wet but became quite nice by lunch time.
At about 7 pm, a storm came in very quickly. There was a tornado warning. The wind went from non-existent to bending trees sideways and rocking VanGo in a couple of minutes. Then, the rain started. VanGo wasn't really ready for that and he leaked all over the place. One leak just about filled a large cup. Just as quickly, the wind died down and the sun came out.
I got quite a bit done today and Rochelle was very productive as well. I was feeling much better over the day and I think that I will be in good shape to head out tomorrow. I am really itching to get back on the bike and get some good miles in. This is the longest that I've been of the bike since last fall.
Tomorrow's goal is Fargo, ND, 124 km from our campground.
Today was a pretty slow day. We spent a major portion of it waiting at Braaten's Auto Service for VanGo to be repaired. It turned out that the water pump was in a very bad state so let's hope that this will solve the overheating problems. It sounds like they had a difficult time dealing with broken and stripped bolts and other issues related to a 28 year old engine.
Now I am feeling a bit under the weather so we are still in Grand Forks and there is a likelihood that we will be here tomorrow night as well. We should just rent an apartment! At least we are in a proper RV Park just outside of town.
It's starting to feel a bit like the movie Ground Hog Day. We wake up in the morning in the same Walmart parking lot. After just about killing VanGo's batteries last night, he started up easily at 8am and didn't immediately start to overheat. We had our route all planned out and places were we could pull over if he started to overheat but there was none of that. In fact, instead of driving directly to the shop, we drove around the neighbourhood that shop was in, just to see if we could see any signs of overheating. No such luck.
So we went to the shop and they took him right in. We set up our laptops in the waiting room and it had a power outlet! We could recharge all of those devices that we had discharged yesterday and get some work done.
After a couple of hours of them looking at VanGo, asking us questions and then going and looking again, the only thing that they found with any fault was the water pump. It wasn't completely broken but was extremely worn. So they ordered a new one and will install it tomorrow morning. So if you are keeping count, that will be another night in the Walmart parking lot.
VanGo has shown two other problems, one is that the temperature gauge goes off the deep end sometimes when it is not possible for it have overheated. The second is that it occasionally does not start. They were not able to replicate those problems so we are left hoping that these things do not come up again or at least not very often.
We left VanGo with the shop to try to see if they could replicate these other problems at other points in the day. We took our bicycles and rode over to the outdoor pool for a swim and a shower. The place was full of kids so we didn't stay long. We set up our office in a local Taco Bell for the afternoon and then picked up VanGo in the late afternoon. We took him for a drive around town to see if we could trigger anything but no problems surfaced. We are now at Walmart again. We could have been staying at an RV park outside of town but the Walmart is close enough to the shop that we could get it there even if VanGo overheats.
It would seem that you can ride a motorcycle in North Dakota without a helmet. At least, I have yet to see a helmet on a rider.
Today was a pretty uneventful one. For the most part, we stayed in the Walmart parking lot since we didn't want to take VanGo anyhere else and get stuck. The weather was a humid 25-26 degrees and we had some intermittent showers. We realized almost too late that our isolator for our deep cycle battery wasn't working properly, which means we almost drained two (2) batteries today running our gadgets and computers. Once we realized this, we shut everything down and were lucky to get VanGo started again. So, tonight, our update will be brief and will not include any pictures (not that there are any new ones to share :-).
Geoff and I are hoping for the best tomorrow morning at the mechanics. We've run the engine and while the sensors say it's overheating, we're not seeing or feeling any heat. Perhaps it's a thermostat issue or a sensor one. That would be nice if it were. Hopefully, we'll have some positive news about VanGo in the morning and where things stand...until then greetings, yet again, from the lovely Walmart parking lot in Grand Forks, North Dakota!