I've been falling behind with the blog again so I will try to recap the past few days tonight. Day 26 took us into New Ulm, MN and it was our sixth day of riding in a row. We were all feeling it in our muscles and were very appreciative of our rest day. I got a wonderful massage and a lot of the ladies spent the whole day at the spa, getting their nails done and the works! After my massage, I walked around and explored New Ulm a bit. It's a predominantly German population there which I wouldn't have expected, and although I'm not big on German food, I did manage to spend the remainder of my day digging around the two used bookstores in town. We stayed in dorms for the two nights in New Ulm, but were back to camping the next night. The ride to get to Owatonna was a little over 70 miles and for the first 50 I was right behind the biggest of the big dogs, Tim, who offered two hours of pull time through a headwind in exchange for his haircut, which I gladly accepted. Even though he had to do most of the work as we headed into the wind it was still a challenge for me to keep up because he averages 20+ mph. To my surprise I was able to stay on his tail until the wind shifted and hit us from the side. We got to camp around noon and set up our tents at the county fairground. I read and napped my afternoon away until it was time to eat. After dinner at the most incredible $10.99 Grand Buffet I have ever seen, I got to play hair salon again and we have 3 more riders lookin fabulous!
Today was a 90 mile ride to Winona, although it seemed to go pretty quick. We stopped along the way for some cool breaks. One was a coffeeshop with bangin smoothies at the 2000 mile mark (yes 2000 miles, I can't believe it either). It doesn't feel like we've gone that far! The next fun stop was to swim in a creek, something I've been itching to do this whole trip so when Nelle, John, and I saw one that looked decently clean we hopped on the opportunity! The water was probably about 50ยบ but we were so hot it felt wonderful. That reminds me, once again I must say how lucky we have been with the weather. Maybe it's our positive vibes that are keeping the rain away, but we've been told a few times in the past days how places an hour away from our route have been hit with like 8" of rain in a day. Other than some little showers here and there, we haven't seen any of that (thankfully)! We are staying in some really fancy dorms tonight (the Ritz Carlton as Laura called it). Minnesota has been pretty cool, but so many freaking mosquitoes! Tomorrow we cross the Mississippi River and our next state border into Wisconsin. Bring us all the cheese curds!
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