West to Minnesota

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Back in March, as we were planning for this summer’s travel, we set our sights to explore Minnesota after coming out of the air show in Oshkosh Wisconsin. We’ve only camped in the far southwestern portion of the state way back in 2019 so there were lots of places to visit. We had picked a couple of county parks in the Minneapolis/St Paul area as well as a Corps of Engineers campground and a couple of state parks further north. All together, we had reserved 34 nights worth of campsites but had left a few days unplanned coming out of Wisconsin to give us some flexibility and to account for the few hundred miles of travel.

We find using Elks Lodges for these open slots in our schedule to work out well. There is a lodge in Winona Minnesota just across the Mississippi River. They don’t have any RV services but do have a fairly large parking lot which should work out well. We’ve been camping without utilities for the past 10 nights so doing 3 more shouldn’t be a problem. The dump station at Camp Scholler was a busy place Monday morning but with multiple lanes, it didn’t take too long. We had planned the drive across Wisconsin with several stops to pick up geocaches along the way in additional counties. Since we wouldn’t be traveling on interstates where there would be legit rest areas, we had carefully picked a couple of smaller waysides along Wisconsin Route 21.

The first stop was one we would only fit in if there weren’t any poorly parked vehicles. We were able to see the situation before turning in to know we would be okay to stop. The couple of cars parked on the far side of the lot were here to do some rock climbing on a large outcropping called Ship Rock. We watched them for a bit before I went to find the geocache hidden on the far side but fortunately there was a way to get around without climbing over it.

Climbers at Ship Rock

Our second planned stop was for lunch at Neecedah National Wildlife Refuge. The aerial view we had made it look like we should be able to get in and out without the need to unhook the Jeep from the motorhome. But we never got a chance to confirm that was the case because about 4 miles before the refuge entrance was a sign stating the road was closed ahead. Encountering a road closure is never great but it’s even worse when driving a big rig like ours on secondary roads. It wasn’t clear if the road was closed just before or just after the refuge and we decided to just skip the place and head south to the Mauston Wisconsin and pick up I-90. The detour did push our 170 mile drive to nearly 200 but we found a large parking lot at a Walmart worked out for a later lunch and as we crossed into Minnesota, we stopped at the Welcome Center that had some nice views of the Mississippi River.

Lock and Dam 7 on Mississippi River

The Winona Elks Lodge was not open on Monday but we found a large parking lot that was reasonably level and provide good sun coverage for our solar panels for the 3 days we plan on staying here. The four lane road near the lodge was busy during the day but wasn’t terribly noisy at night. Since Winona is right along the state line and Mississippi River, we studied what was in the region and made a plan to go out for a drive to see some local sites and get geocaches in several counties. We could head north along the Minnesota side of the river and then cross over and come back around on the Wisconsin side.

On Tuesday we started our drive to the north. We had selected a cache or two in each county we would be driving through as well as a few sightseeing stops, but we are always looking for other places along the way and as we entered the town of Lake City MN, we saw a pretty pullout with a nice view of a small marina and Lake Pepin. Turns out that this site commemorates the lake as being the place where waterskiing was “invented” back in 1922.

Lake Pepin

Lots of Mayflies

Lake City Marina

About 20 miles further north is the town of Red Wing. We had a couple of things to visit in town that sounded interesting. First was the Red Wing Shoe Company. As you might have guessed, this is the headquarters for the company. Their main offices are on one side of the road and the store and museum is directly across the street. As you walk into the store, you are greeted by a boot. Not just a normal boot but one over 20 feet tall. According to the label, it is a USA size 638 1/2 - just a bit bigger than my normal size 11.

Red Wing Shoe Company Corporate Offices

Great Big Boot

Upstairs is a museum with quite a few displays both about the history of the company as well as details of how their boots are constructed. I’ve never given much thought to the parts needed to make a leather work boot but it is more involved than what I expected.

First Half of Boot Construction

Final Steps

There is also a display with used work boots from around the country. It’s not clear how the couple dozen boots found their way to the Wall of Honor but most of them appear to be very well used. We did wander around the shoe store to see if there was anything we needed. Since work boots aren’t really needed for our lifestyle any longer, we left empty handed.

Well Used Boots on Wall of Honor

1925 Billy Boot Included a Knife

Just a mile or so west of downtown is the Pottery Museum of Red Wing. The little museum is in a larger building with several other businesses. Apparently this part of the country has very good clay deposits and since the early 1860’s, numerous producers made stoneware and pottery over the years. Much of the early items produced were various sizes of crocks and jugs including one 70 gallon crock.

Pottery Museum of Red Wing

A Bunch of Crocks

70 Gallon Jug

Over the years, the potteries expanded their offerings to include flower pots, vases and then even dinnerware. It was interesting to see how extensive the collection is at this fairly small museum. One corner of the museum shows some of the broken pottery pieces that were excavated from the old pit where damaged pieces were discarded. It was constructed like an archaeological site with older pieces near the bottom and newer styles and patterns up top.

Figurines

Colorful Pottery

Vintage Kitchen

Cute Little Giraffe

Old Damaged Pottery

On the way out, we checked out a few of the other stores in the building and also walked through the main entrance that had lots of photographs from the area back in the heyday of pottery making.

Aerial Photo of Old Pottery Factory

Before leaving Red Wing, we stopped at a nearby regional park called Barn Bluff. There are several walking trails and even a few geocaches. It sounded like the view from the top of the bluff was nice but it was a hot afternoon and we knew we still had a fair amount of driving once we cross the river and head south through Wisconsin so we limited our stay here to just check out one of the old kilns.

Barn Bluff Entrance

Carlson Lime Kiln

For our drive down the Wisconsin side of the river, we had picked out caches that sounded interesting in the various counties we needed. One such stop was at a small park in the town of Stockholm. We parked and started to walk across the grass towards a few pine trees near ground zero. This wasn’t ideal since we seem to have a problem finding geocaches hidden in evergreen trees. But Mother Nature had made this find even more unlikely because as I got 20 feet away, thousands of bugs started to fly out of the trees. At the time I didn’t know for sure what they were (I later discovered they are mayflies) but there were so many of them that they almost looked like a small dark cloud. They didn't seem to bite but so many landed on me that I decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation and we could find another cache.

In the town of Alma, we saw a sign for a dam and lock along the river. We always enjoy checking out these so we stopped for a look. In order to get to the lock, you need to cross over a couple of railroad tracks. Fortunately they have installed a pedestrian bridge over the tracks so it isn’t a big deal to get to the lock. Alas there were no ships or barges in the lock.

Bridge Over Tracks

Lock Waiting for Boat

Dam #4 in Background

Before we left, we heard a distant train horn so we headed back up to the bridge to watch the northbound train pass by under us. A couple minutes later another train was heading southbound.

Crossing Bridge

Northbound Train Approaches

Southbound Train

One more interesting stop was in the town of Czechville. The Prairie Moon Sculpture Gardens is just a short distance off the main road. The land here was purchased back in 1952 by a retired farmer. Over the years he started to make stone and concrete sculptures even though he had no formal art training. By the age of 89, Herman Rusch had created over 40 pieces that were scattered around the grounds. He sold the place back in 1979 at an auction and for over a decade the place didn’t receive much TLC until the Kohler Foundation purchased it in 1992 and began restoring the sculptures.

Welcome to Prairie Moon

Mini Windmill

As we wandered the grounds, a young boy visiting with his grandmother ran up to tell us that the building was closed so we cannot tour what was inside. There was no real consistent pattern to the style. The 260 foot long arched fence along one edge of the property was quite beautiful.

Pretty Arched Fence

While most of the sculptures were more whimsical, there were a few reproductions of more real world things like a saguaro cactus and even a man fighting a bear. It was definitely an unusual stop along our drive.

Bear Vs Man

Before heading back into Minnesota, we stopped in a residential area on the northern side of Trempealeau. There was a geocache with around 100 favorite points which caused us to wonder what it was. We often don’t like looking for a cache on private property especially one that is in a very densely populated but we were intrigued. We aren’t huge Dr Who fans but even so what we found was quite impressive. The blue phone booth sized building was in the side yard. We needed to figure out the combination to unlock it but once inside of the T.A.R.D.I.S. We found how much Dr Who memorabilia could fit in a small space - or maybe it wasn’t that small of building once inside? We stopped for one more geocache in a small park in the town of Le Crescent Minnesota. It would have been an easy find other than our timing was such that a farmer’s market was taking place. Fortunately the hide was along the periphery of the booths so I could make the find while Chris checked out the items for sale. It was a full day with 4 new Minnesota counties and 5 in Wisconsin.

T.A.R.D.I.S.

When we got back to the Elks Lodge, it was open although not many cars were parked there. It turns out that most of the local members park on the other side of the building so we didn’t realize there were a fair number. We head in to check in with the bartender and have a beer. We start to talk with one of the locals to get a feeling for what there is to do in the area since we still have one more full day to explore. We also asked if he knew where we could get some fresh cheese curds since we are still close to Wisconsin. He mentioned that the best place to stop was in Ellsworth. Turns out this town has a huge cheese making plant and sells fresh cheese curds daily. Too bad we didn’t find out about it a day earlier since Ellsworth was only 10 miles off of our drive yesterday. We debated about heading back there tomorrow but saw that it could also be reached fairly easily out of our next stop near the Twin Cities.

One thing we have been missing out on recently has been any real hiking or biking. It’s been over 3 weeks since we’ve done a proper hike and more than 5 weeks since our long bike ride back in Marquette Michigan. The local Elk member had suggested a couple of nearby bike rides but when we did some further investigation, we discovered a nicer looking rail trail if we were willing to head about 25 miles southwest of Winona. The Root River State Trail extends for 42 miles from the towns of Houston to Fountain Minnesota. Obviously that’s way farther than we can manage so we looked at various sections of the trail and associated parking options. We settle on starting in the town of Peterson and heading southwest - hopefully making it to Lanesboro about 13.5 miles away. The advantage of this plan is that we will be heading slightly uphill, gaining roughly 100 feet of elevation. It’s not a lot, but should make for an easier return trip.

One thing we had not planned on was running into damage from a storm that had come through the first night we were in Winona. While it was pretty intense near us, apparently it was much worse over in the direction we were heading. The weather service determined that the the storm was widespread and produced straight line winds of over 90 MPH in spots making it large enough to be classified as a derecho. As we were driving towards Peterson, we could see significant storm damage. In fact the road we traveled between Rushford and Peterson is adjacent to the bike path and we were delayed in traffic while clean up crews were clearing fallen trees both on the road and the trail.

When we got to the trailhead in Peterson, there were clear signs of damage. A smaller tree was split in half by the parking lot and there were signs of recent cleanup. Based on what we saw, we were hoping that the work crew that we saw working on the trail had already been through the section that we intended to bike today. It was clear that the mission of the crew was to simply cut up the fallen trees across the trail and leave the pieces on either side with more cleanup to follow. There was lots of twigs and leaf debris on the trail but at least all of the big limbs had been cut and pushed back.

Storm Damage at Parking in Peterson

Cute Welcome Sign

Recently Cleared Tree

A mile or two into our ride, we came upon a couple biking in the opposite direction. We stopped to talk to them to find out if the trail was about the same where they had come from. It sounded like it was although they had not traveled all the way from where we were heading so only time will tell. We warned them that as they continued, they might run into the crew clearing the trail and will need to turn back.

We enjoyed the scenery along the trail with small farmsteads and a few homes in sight of the trail. At times the trail is adjacent to the river while other times we are several hundred feet from it and simply traveling through forested sections that have now been clear of some of the trees.

Old Barn

Pretty Brick Silo

River View

We made it into Lanesboro a bit after noon. Instead of bringing along food, we had selected an appropriately name restaurant for lunch - Pedal Pushers. They had a nice selection of food options and our lunch was quite tasty.

Bridge Along Trail

Downtown Lanesboro

We left our bikes locked up and just walked around town after eating. We had an Adventure Lab to complete that toured us around town. It turns out to be a rather hilly town which isn’t what we really needed given we still had over 13 miles to bike back to the car. But the view from Church Hill was pretty nice one we got there.

Church on Church Hill

View from Church Hill

The tour took us to several of the dozen or so “medallions” placed around town. They are the size of a manhole cover but with ornate features depicting some aspect of the town’s history. The town has strong Scandinavian roots and it shows.

One of Many Medallions

Sons of Norway Lodge

The falls at Mill Pond in downtown Lanesboro were quite pretty. There must be a campground just above the falls as we could see multiple RVs just above the water from below. One other oddity we spotted in our walk was an old phone booth. Nowadays these are pretty uncommon just on their own but this one has been converted into a “Storytelling Phone Booth”. Step inside, select one of several stories and listen about Lanesboro history - quite unique.

Falls in Lanesboro

Lanesboro Story Phone Booth

We headed back to the bikes to start our ride back. We had one last stop we had seen on our way out this morning in the town of Whalan. It’s only about five miles but hopefully we will have burned off enough calories to try out a slice of pie from the Aroma Pie Shop. We parked the bikes and head in. The choice of pies was quite large. We settled on two that sounded excellent. We were warned that they were closing shortly so we would need to eat outside. That wasn’t an issue since there are picnic tables just across the street next to the trail. We definitely didn’t need the pie but it was excellent.

Aroma Pie Shop

Rolling Pin Collection

The rest of the return trip was nice. We ended up getting in 27.3 miles. Total time was just over 5 hours but riding time was not quite 3 hours. I suspect the other sections of the Root River Trail might be equally nice if we only had more time in the area. But we have reservations at a county park campground just south of the Twin Cities. This will be the first time in a month that we will have full hookups at our campsite and are looking forward to it.