Day #80 - 5/31/2011 - Lake Mills, WI to Dousman to Racine - 92 miles

We biked 28 miles to Dousman, then drove 64 miles to the plush Seeker Motel in Racine.

It was sad leaving the Doubletree…definitely the nicest room, most comfortable bed, heftiest shower towels I’ve enjoyed since Pensacola Beach.  And - if you've ever stayed at one - y'know those large, warm cookies they give you when you check in?  They gave me all that I wanted and more than I needed.


Becky using a “Community Car” program truck and accompanied by Lani, picked me up from the Doubletree.

Getting two bicycles into anything short of a panel truck is a challenge.
Nothing like a good bicycle rack.  Or a truck.

The plan was to drop us off about 20 miles out of town, leaving us with a reasonable 70 mile day of biking  We headed towards one of the access points of the Glacial Drumlin State Trail.  Developed in 1986, the Glacial Drumlin State Trail is one of Wisconsin’s best bicycle trails.  Starting in Cottage Grove, the trail goes east for 52 miles where it connects with other trails in the Fox River Sanctuary in Waukesha.

We unloaded our gear and Lani and Becky parted ways until  next time.

Planning this part of the trip, from Madison to Racine and then to Chicago, I finally noticed (duh) that Google Maps could help you identify bike trails.  Bike trails criss-crossed large portions of Wisconsin though connecting between trails was problematic.  Clearly, my interest in bike trails was several orders of magnitude different than it was on day #1 of the trip.  If you run a Google search on "bike trails", you'll get over 4.4 million hits.

Florida natives at the Lake Mills entrance to the Glacial-Drumlin bike trail.

The Glacial-Drumlin bike trail has a $20 annual fee or a $4 daily fee.  There was a drop-box for the fee next to the trail map.

You are admonished that if a ranger finds you on the trail without proof of fee payment, you'll be tased, bro, as well as penalized $5.

So, it turns out that most of the the Glacial-Drumlin trail is just that: a trail, an unpaved trail of fine gravel on sand.  

There were many obstacles on the trail, some more obvious than others.  Can you spot the obstacle here?

The GDBT starts off as a dirt path with small gravel, surrounded by forests, fields, water and/or farms.  There were rabbits, muskrats, hummingbirds, wild flowers with air perfumed with honeysuckle and grass.  It was one of the most relaxing parts of the trip.  The winds were a combination of cross and tail and it was pleasantly warm.  Unfortunately, the dirt/gravel really slowed us down, dropping our speed to less then 9mph. 

Best as I could tell, this was the Crawfish River which ultimately feeds into Lake Koshkonong.  The Lake is a popular year-round destination for boating, ice-fishing and snowmobiling.  

Shortly after we started, Lani began having worsening abdominal pain, sufficiently severe that even with the scenery, warmth, sun and generally favorable winds, she had to stop.  

Resorting to the our most-used iPhone app, Google maps, we looked for somewhere to re-group.   We pulled in to Dousman, stopping at a gas station to pick up some Pepto-Bismol tablets.    

The Glacial-Drumlin bike trail had now turned to a paved surface, making it the best biking conditions we had enjoyed for a long time.  We  continued…for a few miles and then, no mas.   

We called for back-up and within an hour were in an Enterprise Rental Car (“We’ll pick you up!”), heading towards Racine, WI.  It was just as well as after only a few minutes in the car, there was a major rainstorm.

 We pulled into  Racine and Lani identified what had to be the cheapest motel in town, the Seeker Motel.  It looked pretty funky from the outside but the rooms were unusually spacious and clean enough, even if the the bath mat was just a sheet of oval paper; at $45 with free WiFi, it was a noble place for our last night on the road. 

The motel looks at lot better on the website.  

Yelp indicated that Wells Brothers Restaurant had the best pizza around…we dropped in for lunch.  WBR has been family run for 90 years…the neighborhood had certainly changed, but the fact that there were two large parking lots designated WBR-only said something. 

The Wells Brothers Restaurant has received numerous awards.  In the restaurant, they have  a food review book with WBR receiving a #6 national ranking for its pizza.

Inside, the décor was warm, homey with a family and local touch.  Our server, Amy, was a Racine local with that special Wisconsin accent; I kept asking her questions just to keep her talking.

At 2pm on a weekday afternoon, we were promptly seated.  Amy, our server, told us the evening and weekend wait for a table can be more than 2 hours.

The Caesar salad was excellent and the pizza, in a thin crust style, rates as #3 in my memory (Pizza Baffeto in Rome as #1, pizza by Bob as #2 and then WBR.)  

After we had pizza in Rome at Pizza Baffeto, I became obsessed with thin-crust pizza.  For  the six months preceding the bike trip, I was making pizza 5x/week, trying to get it right.  Ultimately, like most things, it's easy once you learn how.  One trick: indestructible Fibrament pizza in the gas grill that I've insulated with fiberglass, producing temperatures of 600-800°F.  The pizza cooks in about 2 minutes giving a nice char to the crust.

Overall, lunch at Wells Brothers Pizza was both excellent and memorable.

In that special local accent, Amy advised us “There isn’t crap to say about Racine, but we’re good at food” and shared with us a book that ranked WBR as the #6 best pizza in the country.   It was great chatting with Amy.

Racine, population 82196, was first visited by the French in 1699, but was ultimately settled by Yankees from upstate New York.  There is a large Danish influence, reflected in the oldest Danish Lutheran Church in North America, founded on August 22, 1851 and the local obsession with Danish pastries, especially the kringle.

Amy, our server from Wells Brothers Pizza, recommended the highly regarded OH Danish Bakery as the place to go for kringles.  They were good...but...Bob is not strong on flaky/fruity, preferring, say, a good brownie or chocolate chip cookie.

Amy recommended the O&H Bakery for dessert,  famous for their kringles: a layer of filling (rhubarb when we arrived) sandwiched between two pancake/waffle layers.  It was okay, but a distant second to a good brownie.  We passed on buying anything and opted for a “Skinny Cow” ice cream sandwich for dessert.  (BTW, on-the-road, the gas station/C-store has a wide array of budget dessert options.  My favorite: coffee and a brownie, or a small pack of Oreo cookies.)

We returned to our plush motel room and relaxed for the remainder of the day.  

This was the final day of the bike portion of our adventure.  I could not believe it was all going to come to an end.  Ambivalent over the past few days, now I was just feeling the impending let down: no more daily adventures, no more hours in the out doors, no more days with my daughter, no more inquiring locals wondering what we were doing.  It was all a metaphor for life.