Recap of the past couple weeks : Winona to St. Louis

As you can probably tell, I've done a pretty poor job of keeping this thing current. Blame it on a lack of blog-facilitating luxuries, like computers and electricity. Here's a scattered and inconclusive summary of the last couple weeks of the trip:

First off, I am in St. Louis and Jason is not. We rode together until Dubuque, Iowa, at which point he decided to return home to focus on other projects. I'm a little bummed that we weren't able to swing a complete trip down the river, but I'm glad he was able to come out for the week that he did. Hopefully Nate and I will be able to convince him to join us for a few days of riding south of St. Louis. Here's a pretty accurate representation of how Jason spends his time now that he's not on the road having awesome adventures with his friends:



Our third day of the ride found us in Winona, where we ran into a guy named Chris doing a much more badass version of our ride on a Salsa Fargo:

This was my first time seeing one of these bikes in person, and it definitely rekindled my desire for one. Chris is taking his all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, and is blogging about the trip at http://thespicycamel.blogspot.com. Peep it.

Seeing his bike reminded me of the Salsa 24, an event after which I was convinced that I had lost my camera for two weeks and almost gave up on the idea of maintaining this site. After finally finding it two hours before leaving Northfield, I realized that I had only taken four photos with it the entire weekend and the only non-horrible one was this:



After Winona we crossed into La Crosse, Wisconsin. La Crosse Lager played a significant role in my adolescence, so it was awesome to finally pass through the city for which its named. What I didn't know was that the La Crosse brewery boasts the World's Largest Six Pack:



Wisconsin's Wyalusing State Park was my favorite spot that I've camped in thus far. After a grueling climb to the parks entrance we were met with some amazing views, especially after some guy we met in the park office handed us the tag to the best campsite in the park:


The post - Dubuque solo portion of this trip didn't yield many pictures, probably as a consequence of my putting in much longer days in the saddle and not wandering around so much. Highlights of this portion of the trip included Nauvoo, Illinois, a Mormon tourist destination with a gigantic temple and really creepy religious post cards.

I entered Missouri at Mark Twain's home town of Hannibal, and reached St. Louis after three consecutive 75 + mile days. St. Louis' Riverfront Trail provided a scenic way to enter the city, though at one point I did have to portage over a fence and through a giant construction site (the toothless guy in the pickup said it was cool):


The trail ends downtown, just a couple of blocks from the arch. Here's some weird industrial art at the end:



I arrived in St. Louis on September 28th, exactly two weeks after leaving Northfield. The past week has been filled with catching up with friends, exploring the city, and eating my weight in grilled food. Nate and I will be continuing on the MRT in about two weeks, and I hope to ride a portion of the Katy Trail for several days later this week.