I bemoan this time of year as the “touring season” in the northern hemisphere winds down and the touring stories dwindle out for the winter. Every morning I look forward to those story and photos and the great experiences you folks have. With that in mind, I post a link to one of my road trips this year. Drive somewhere, cycle all day, drive somewhere else, repeat for a few days. Sorta touring. I did not actually pack the panniers this season but I’ve had some fine experiences.

I did pack the tent-n-stuff twice to go backpacking on the AT. First time in decades.

New England exploring from over on the C&V sub forum

Always hoping to sneak one in late. Several years ago there was a mid-December weekend around here in the 70s. Took a long weekend trip to a state forest campground in NJ that is open all year. Big fun. The following week it turned very cold for an extended stretch.

Prowler I really like your Traveling and Riding version of not-touring. It's what we did in Europe and I haven't considered it before for a domestic trip...until now.

I’ve got 80 pages of notes I need to wade through so no stories yet but here’s some pictures. Bemidji to Brainerd, MN











Yes, that is a mushroom in a tree.

Minneapolis, MN to St. Charles MO

St. Louis to Memphis







Madrid, MO





The last 90 miles ended on the best road I’d ridden on the whole trip. Brand new pavement with a stiff tailwind…heaven!



The Mud Island scale model of the Mississippi.



1700 miles over 6 weeks but I had to stop in Memphis because there were too many hurricanes forming in the Gulf. My wife is willing to go back for the last 700 miles.

One story

There is a light mist, just enough to be annoying. I was at the end of a long day and my hotel was half a mile up the road when all of a sudden I hear “WHOOP! WHOOP!” from the state patrol car right behind me. I stopped, of course, and as the drizzle dripped from my helmet visor, I asked the approaching officer how could I help her? She said that they had gotten calls on me from all kinds of people and she was just checking. She said “you do look like you know what you’re doing. But we have to check.”

“License, please, and your Social Security number.” And with that she went back to her nice dry car leaving me standing there with drizzle dripping off of my helmet visor. I stood there for a few minutes before she finally brought my license back and asked me if I lived around here. I said no I’m on a tour of the Mississippi.

“Well have a nice night and a good trip.“

Thus ended one of the most bizarre encounters I have ever had on any tour and I’ve been doing this for 40 damn years.

Great photos above and was surprised at how many of those landmarks I've ridden by as well.

Yeah. As noted above, somewhere I have a photo of the fish restaurant entrance. And we spent two nights at the Lake Itasca hostel and walked across the Mississippi River. During a boat tour of the lake, a park ranger told us that they rearrange the rocks after the ice melts to make it easier to get across. (The freezing of the outflow often moves them.). Also have a photo of that Paul and Babe.

that is certainly a bizarre one. "All kinds of people" very much touches on the perception thing that some folks have of someone on a bike. I could be way off base, but I assume this comes from the wide social divide of there being more poor folks around, and homeless people using bikes, so "concerns" over seeing a "suspect" individual riding past, maybe up to "no good"?
One could also suspect that some nosey old busy-body made the calls and the cops felt obliged to respond.
Heck a few years back I got pulled over in my car by a cop because I was driving 90k in a 100-110 zone, so 55mph in a 65 zone. Practically no one on this two lane in each direction interstate type highway, a sunny calm day, and the cop told me I was driving too slowly, could be dangerous......I think the chances were pretty good that he and his buddy (a second police car showed up also) were bored and needed to break up the day. Or he imagined a drunk driving slowly not to be noticed-- who the heck knows, kinda like your story.

oh, whats the story with the upside down big mushroom way up on a pine tree branch?

A friend of mine called the people reporting me “curtain twitchers” kind along the line of Gladys Kravitz. The sky had darkened…it was misting…but it was no where near sundown. I was riding on US61 which is a major highway without being an interstate but it had, at that point, some of the widest shoulders I’d ridden on so far. The shoulder was 10 to 12 feet (a full car lane) wide and I wasn’t riding near the white line. I took the comment about being “worried” about me as more of a concern for my safety rathe than someone thinking I was up to no good.

I didn’t, by the way, get mad about the incident. It was so bizarre that I laughed about it for the rest of the day’s ride.

I really have no idea. There were lots of mushrooms at the campground (as well as mosquitoes!) and the one up the tree was too far up to have been thrown there. I suspect squirrels were eating them but I didn’t know squirrels ate mushrooms. Maybe one went on a little bit of a trip​​​​​​​

Agree on no point in getting mad. I found my situation quite funny also, especially when I think of the times in the past on motorcycles riding fast, but never once getting a speeding ticket, and then driving along in a perfectly reasonable manner actually getting told by an officious policeman to drive a bit faster.

Your squirrel theory seems likely. Mushroom tripping rodents perhaps too.

Per the US Supreme Court, American law enforcement can lie to you (uh, but to be clear, you can't lie to them.) There may or may not have been any calls about you.

We rode on 61 for a while to get from Minneapolis to Red Wing. New experience for me. At least it was a Sunday, so it wasn’t as busy as I imagined it got.

I ended up following US61 much of my trip. The grades tended to be better than the rural roads. It actually wasn’t all that bad, although it did vary in terms of shoulder width. Not as badly as the roads in Illinois did, however. US highways in Illinois would go from great shoulder to no shoulder on a seemingly random basis.

Hey, we here in the Land of Lincoln pride ourselves on the 2nd highest gasoline taxes in the US with the worst roads in the US. We can't afford shoulders to ride on but somehow we still find a way to install rumble strips where there is no space nor need (just to keep your ride exciting).

Yeah about the grades. After we got off 61 I remember having some hills to Red Wing. We were bummed. There was one south from the grocery store to the campground that we had to climb with dinner, breakfast and lunch supplies for the 12 of us, and we were short one person, Found out the next morning that he had been getting drunk and didn’t get to camp until sometime around midnight.

What I remember about IL roads is the tar drizzled to fill in cracks on country roads. It was near 100 on a near century day to Streator. No shade, so the roads had to be hotter. The tar became so soft that it sprayed on downtubes, and the tiny pieces of rock stuck to it when the tar cooled and hardened.

Yea, mostly crummy tar and chip roads, well actually, mostly just tar, Ha. which is why during the summer months you want to have your riding completed by late morning. Your observation reminded me of an organized tour across central Illinois several years ago. On one day a bunch of riders got a late start and were forced to ride into the middle afternoon after the roads had heated up so badly. The tar ended up sticking to their chains, derailleurs, brakes and onto their frames. The tires were so caked in tar and gravel that you couldn't pedal as everything was seized up. Needless to say they had to be SAG-ed into camp by the dozens. Their tires were un-ridable and so all the bike shops in a huge radius drove over to deliver new tires and chains so these people could complete the tour. Fortunately my partner and I knew better and were done riding by 11AM.

woah, around here and in my riding experience, I've fortunately never run into this problem. Sure a few soft asphalt a few times, but nothing like this. And we do get hot weather up here too, maybe just not as hot and probably quite different road surfaces.

Yep. Rumble strips on a road that has a 6” shoulder are so fun and so many drivers feel that bicycle should ride to the right of those rumble strips on the generous 1/2” of pavement that is left. Here are some screenshots along US34 from Monmouth to the Mississippi. The first picture shows a really nice shoulder on a fairly heavily trafficked road. Not sure of the speed limit but I suspect 55 to 65.

Then the road transitions from a 10 foot shoulder to a 2 foot shoulder with rumble strips taking up the bulk of the shoulder.



Then they add in a guard rail and narrow the shoulder.



But then they go and eliminate the shoulder entirely. Same speed, same traffic. It still took several minutes to extract the saddle after all the puckering along the highway.



Thankfully, a nice side road appeared near this point which let me avoid that shoulderless hell.

Some amazing pics here!

A few photos from the last portion of our tour this year. Mostly taken in October. Each photo has a label underneath.

We took twenty six thousand photos during this tour. Will take me months to sort through.


Hagia Sophia, Nicaea. Location of the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD)



Tomb of King Midas (with the golden touch), Phrygia



Archaeological site of Gordion (Alexander the Great cuts the Gordian Knot), Phrygia



Lake Tuz, central Anatolia



Göreme, Cappadocia



Valley of the Upper Euphrates



Valley of the Upper Aras



Armenian Highlands. Walls and ruins of the ancient Armenia capital city Ani.



Near the Turkish-Georgian border



Akhaltsikhe Castle, south western Georgia

Yan, always fun to see interesting images from far off places.
Have fun editing and selecting the strongest core group of photos, interspersed with images that mean a lot to both of you. Back up stuff diligently and revisit your edits after a bit of time to get some better perspective, and its totally okay to have different versions of edits, just identify them well to not have mixups in the future.

I got out twice in 2024. First to South Korea (the third time touring there) in May. And then to Malaysia & Thailand in December.