AAN day 33 - La Crosse, WI --> Wisconsin Dells, WI

Across America North - day 33 - La Crosse, WI --> Wisconsin Dells, WI

I'm posting this a day late because the wireless network's connection to the Internet was broken. It was a day that started with an hour delay waiting for a rainstorm to pass followed by detours. After having the hotel rug pulled out from under us, the network was broken. But all's well now so here is yesterday's post today.

We went through some tunnels today. We couldn't ride our bikes through them so we had to walk. They utterly dark, too. If we hadn't been required to bring lights, we couldn't have seen our hands in front out faces. The first one was clearly unridable because the narrow path had been eroded by the constantly dripping condensation. The tunnels were much like caves. Water had filled the ditches on both sides of the path. As we approached the first tunnel, it was as if someone had left the freezer door open. Or imagine opening the door to go into a Dairy Queen on a hot day.

About 50 miles of the day was on dirt bike path that ranged from hard-packed dirt to slushy gravel. The green canopy was so thick in many places that the path was often in deep shade on a bright, sunny day.

Once off the bike path, the day returned to normal. It was normal until a construction detour that added 8 miles to the day's total. Even the detour had a detour. One stretch was lined up perfectly with a howling tailwind that blew us along very well. I averaged 28-31 for several miles and was sorry to see it end. It ended when I came to a giant detour sign pointing left. I didn't write down the directions well enough and went left. That was wrong so I got a few bonus miles of headwind coming back.

All this made for a long day so I was very glad to get to the hotel. But the hotel had been sold and the new owner was having none of the previous owner's contractual obligations. In other words, we didn't have hotel reservations and we had nowhere to stay that night. The staff of America by Bicycle showed much patience and grace under pressure in getting us to new hotels for the night. The original hotel was a dump so, as far as that night's hotel was concerned, we were better off although at great expense to America by Bicycle.