(Fri, 6/13/25; 60 miles, 2105 feet of climb)
Today was the exciting finish of MADBIRD: Madison, our state’s capital city!
The weather forecast looked awful a few days ago, but it shaped up quite nicely. We had been secretly discussing a Plan B option to abort the trip a day early if it was raining all day Friday, but I’m glad we waited. We didn’t get a drop of rain all day!
Since we were camping in the epic Devil’s Lake State Park, we tried a new approach to our morning departure: As soon as you get up, you could pack up your tent and sleeping bag and bike down to the lake. That way, people who enjoy a peaceful early morning by the lake could do that, while others could sleep in. As long as everybody is ready to go at the lake at 7:15, you could do whatever you want. That worked perfectly.
Our first big mistake of the day, however, was to follow Google Maps around the west side of the lake. We quickly found out that the “bike trail” was actually just a bit of asphalt woven through a very long boulder field. We thought maybe it would get better, but it never did. I think we averaged less than 1.0 mph awkwardly pushing our heavily laden bikes during that first mile.
But we finally made it to a road, and then it was smooth sailing on a highway and then on a great bike path. The boys were fascinated reading all the signs explaining that this was the site of a massive munitions factory during World War II. They wanted a site in a rural area at least 200 miles from a national border, and close to a railroad track. They ended up razing three churches, a school, and dozens of farms to make room for the 10,000-acre facility.
We stopped at McDonald’s in Sauk City, right across the street from the World’s First Culver’s (which, sadly, was not open for breakfast). From there we took some rural roads that turned out to be rather hilly — actually, today was our most climbing of the entire trip, at 2105 feet!
Then we caught the bike trail along Highway 12 to Middleton, and Lucius led us through some scenic neighborhoods in Shorewood Hills until we got to the University of Wisconsin – Madison campus on the lakefront bike path. We took turns watching the bikes on the lakeside terrace and walking around town.
While Jim and Simon and I were on watch duty, a guy walked by commenting on our nice bike setups. Turns out he is on the design team at Trek Bicycle in Waterloo, 24 miles away. He and Jim had a great talk about manufacturing.
We rode by the capitol building (the second biggest in the USA), and made it to our traditional victory dinner celebration: Texas Roadhouse!
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TRANSLATIONS/BACKGROUND: “MADBIRD” = Madison Bike Ride, my own nickname for a bike ride from our home in Chippewa Falls, WI, down the Chippewa River to Pepin, then down the Mississippi River to La Crosse, then over the Sparta-Elroy Trail to Devil’s Lake and Madison, WI. Nine Scouts and three adult leaders from Boy Scout Troop 72 started out the trip (http://www.troop72.com).
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LINKS:
Old-fashioned BLOG if you have friends who don’t use Facebook:
https://oldscouter.com/
“Old Scouter” Facebook page if you want to follow big adventures with more pictures and video clips (but not unrelated personal posts):
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066334039590
“Old Scouter” YouTube page (when I get time to edit after the trip):
https://youtube.com/@oldscouter9465?si=YpGl5D8fVfniDFex