La Crosse River Trail - July 17, 2010

Day 2 - The La Crosse River Trail - round trip about 52 miles.
A nice hot sunny day - we took Deb's bike to Speed's Bike Shop in Sparta as Deb noticed a spoke was broken - got it repaired and got another spare tube then began the ride.


The trail runs beside the functioning train track. There is an abundance of wildflowers all the way along.

Purple monarda

Joe-pye weed


Morning Glory


Wasn't too long before a very long west bound train went streaming by.




Later we caught up to it when it was 'waiting' near East Bangor. The east bound Amtrak went speeding by later, so we guess this freight train had to wait for the Amtrak to go through before it could continue on.

The wildflowers and trail as we were nearing the last miles of the La Crosse River Trail and then would pick up the Three Rivers Trail into La Crosse it self.

After about 5 miles on the Three River Trail we made it to Riverside Park in La Crosse, on the banks of the Black River. La Crosse is at the convergence of the Black River, La Crosse River and the Mississippi Rivers.

The Cass Street Bridge from Riverside Park

We got lunch at the People's Food Coop on 5th Ave- a great grocery store where we could build our own healthy salad. But just as we hitched our bikes Larry found he had left his gloves sitting on his pack and one was missing so we had to retrace our steps to Riverside Park to locate it.

When paying for lunch he found his credit card was missing! Hmmm, where could that be? We were hoping it was at the Bike Shop in Sparta - that was where he used it last. We also hoped we could get back there before they closed.

After a rest it was back on the trail again to get back to Sparta.

Each way we took a break at a nice park in West Salem - there was a stream of Hogs pouring into town, some type of social event we think.

Could see a storm building as we rode back and we managed to load our bikes into the truck as the first drops of rain fell.

Made it to the bike shop and happily they did have Larry's credit card. A good days biking - we did 55 miles today - a total of 125 for the two days - a new distance record for us!