Madison Fall Tour - Calumet Harbor to Madison

Monday, 13 Sep 2021
94.6 miles
1519 ft of climbing

Thump thump thump. Rustle. I awoke to something moving around near my head. Fortunately it was outside the tent, but I could feel something roughly toad-sized as I brushed my hand along the base of the tent wall. It disappeared.

The sky was still dark but rather than try to snooze with visions of toads crawling up my tent, I crept out of bed and broke camp. I can never sleep in on the last day of a tour anyway, since I'm usually meeting Nancy and meant to be somewhere on time anyway.

So I hit the road, noting the ominous clouds above. Sprinkles, and then steady rain as I approached Fond du Lac on the Peebles Trail. I waited in a park pavilion for a half hour while watching the storm pass on weather radar.

It's clearing, time to go! Right after some marginal gas station coffee and Oreos to warm me up. I made my way to the Wild Goose State Trail, another crushed limestone rail trail.

This was a nice quiet spin to Beaver Dam, past farm fields and marshes. Along the way I saw herons, cranes, a bald eagle, and one brave chipmunk who popped his head out of his mid-trail hole at almost exactly the wrong time.

The rail trail became county "letter roads" again, peaceful if not scenic or sweet smelling. In Beaver Dam I swore to find a healthy lunch but seeing a Casey's convenience store right on my route, I caved and instead enjoyed a slice of pizza.

Back on the county roads, I watched farmers harvest and transport corn silage, a process I wasn't really familiar with. I'm not sure if this is the default practice now instead of harvesting feed corn, but it was universal that day and interesting to watch. It also meant some of the roads were strewn with muddy silage, which adheres surprisingly well to bike frames.

A few tiny towns and one bridge outage later, and I found myself cruising the empty streets of Sun Prairie, a suburb of Madison. It was slightly spooky with all the kids in school and everyone else at their jobs in Madison. I made my way to bike paths that would lead me to the big city.

Madison is one of those cities that (generally) does bike infrastructure right. Instead of token recreational bike paths, a bike lane is a part of every road that's going somewhere useful. It was a relief to just be able to hop on US-151 and use the bike lanes to work my way down to Olbrich Park, where I met up with Nancy. We were happy to see each other, and I was even almost on time.