I've got it figured out now. If I leave at 8:00 am, I get in at 3:00 PM. Which is typical motel check-in time. This allows time for a meal.
Today has a chance of being hot and horrible, but it was cloudy with light rain all morning, and the heat never came. It was low 80s and humid mid-day, but I'm fine with that. There was a headwind, which slowed me down but also kept me cool.
I am in Green Bay.
This is not a place I ever thought I would visit. I did not ride through any nice parts of Green Bay to get to my cheap motel. Maybe I will discover nice parts on the way out tomorrow.
The first 30 miles of my 70 mile ride today paralleled the shore of Lake Michigan. The road runs a ways back from the shore, but now and again you get a nice vista of the lake. There are lots and lots of wildflowers along the side of the road. That's milkweed in the foreground.
I got to Manitowoc I headed inland. I got there before any places were open for lunch, but as I was heading out of town, my leg muscles were feeling a little twitchy and crampy, so I decided to stop for a snack, since there isn't much between Manitowoc and Green Bay.
This was quite a score, it's getting really hard to find V8 and corn nuts any more.
I did about 10 miles of unpaved rail trail. The surface is really good, but it is still faster to ride on pavement. So I rode on the paved road parallel to the trail until it wasn't parallel any more and the trail was much more direct. This is the Devil River State Trail. It's really buggy, which is motivation to ride faster, and it has many bad smells due to swamps and dairy farms.
I rode by this cool old grain elevator, which is still operating, even though it hasn't had rail service in a long time. It was loading stuff into that truck on the left side.
When the 10 miles of unpaved trail came to an end, I still had 15 miles to go, and it was another 10 miles until delicious food. I rode 60 miles on coffee, corn nuts, V8 and Gatorade.
I must eat at Culvers when visiting Wisconsin. Butterburgers are yummy.
And I'm done. It's 3:00 PM, not quite 70 miles ridden, and 7 hours since I set out. It was a fairly tough day, but I feel good.
The room here at the very cheap Village Inn Motel looks nice, but it reeks of cigarette smoke even though the motel is supposed to be non-smoking. It's so no-frills that there was no soap or shampoo. I have my own so I am ready for this circumstance.
There are a bunch of Asian restaurants a couple blocks away. Apparently there is a large Hmong population here.
Which means this was my big chance to add Wisconsin to the list of states where I've had pho.
This was some pretty weird pho. Note the rib. I've never had a rib show up in my pho before. There is also shrimp and fake crabmeat in there too. But no tendon or tripe, which surprised me given that Green Bay is famous for meatpacking. It was good though. Maybe it's Hmong pho.
Here is the Strava track:
https://www.strava.com/activities/15224821266
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