Northwoods Day 15 - Hayward,WI to Red Cedar Lake near Birchwood,WI

Northwoods Day 15 - Hayward,WI to Red Cedar Lake near Birchwood,WI

Monday Oct 12, 2020

Miles 41.5

Total time ~4:30

Ride time 3:56

361 miles from Shawano

Woke up warm and dry in my cheap motel room, while it rained steadily out side.

If the rain stops as predicted, this will be my last day of riding on this northwoods tour.

I pack up and get a delayed checkout, and sure enough, the rain trails off before noon.

I hit the ride @12:40 and the sun and blue skies are already asserting themselves, pushing the clouds to the east. It actually turns into a nice sunny afternoon in the lower 50s as I pedal back to my brother's cabin and my truck. I'm taking my time as this is a short 30 miles day and my last, enjoying the remaining colors. At least I took my time until I realized it really is a 40+ mile day, and I don't want to run out of light!

Patches of trees are still nice, as I hit part of the route near Hayward that I missed on the way out.

On this trip I have ridden over 600 miles. Was expecting more, but then I was expecting a bit warmer and drier weather.

Lesson for next time ; start a couple weeks earlier. Less cold temps, less closed establishments, more tourists, more bugs, hopefully less Covid and more F2F interactions with the locals.

I still have the dirt route in traveled, plus a look around NW WI utilizing tail trails I can do, so there is hope for a next time.

Here some pictures from my explore days after the ride.

Here are today's political signs.

Some comments on the political signs. 

1- my philosophy was to capture unusual signs, and hopefully only once. Every one has seen the popular signs, plenty of these, standard type yard signs. 

2-I have tried to be political party agnostic. If I saw it I snapped it.

3- Since I was riding through small towns and rural areas, the majority of signage was always for Trump. One could speculate that trump supporters were more energetic about their candidate. There plenty of Biden signs too, especially in WI and on native american reservations.

4- there was definitely a tone difference in the non standard signs between camps. I did not (consciously) put my editorial thumb on the scales, that's just how our fellow citizens expressed themselves. 

5- Note my pictures are not a statistically valid representation. Some of the strongest messages only had 1 or maybe 2 instances. Others I included had a dozen or more. The number of standard signs FAR OUTWEIGHED these in number.

In closing, a sign both sides can support, I hope. We got a lot going for us and more in common than we sometimes think!