Trail users traveling west should detour south along Highland Road, then west along Kennedy Memorial Dr, rejoining the trail where it intersects with Kennedy. Trail users traveling east should detour along Kennedy Memorial Dr east, then north on Highland Road until it rejoins the trail.

For more information, go to www.ci.minnestrista.mn.us

This trail, between Dresser and Amery in west central Wisconsin, is tucked into an area of rolling hills, lakes, marshes, maple and oak forests and farmland. The trail is flat, with a hard packed limestone surface suitable for narrow road tires. During our visit over Easter weekend the trail was in bloom from wild fruit trees, and maples had already started to green up due to our unusually early spring .

The trail is named after Harvey Stower, a member of the Wisconsin Legislature and long time mayor of Amery. The name also refers to the numerous lakes along the trail. Lakes near the western end of the trail are large enough to support cabins and recreational boating. Others such as Kinney Lake, between Deronda and Amery, are seepage lakes which depend on groundwater and local precipitation. Seepage lakes are usually surrounded by marsh and virtually inaccessible.

The trail doesn’t appear to get much use, which is too bad because the frequent lakes and lowland marshes create scenic stopping points and break up the tunnel effect along better known trails such as the nearby Gandy Dancer Trail. Of greater interest to this long time road rider are the paved, low traffic roads that intersect and run parallel to the trail. Those roads weave among the rolling hills, skirt lakes and wander through woodland and farm country. I’ll be back to explore those roads later this season.

The Stower Seven Lakes Trail isn’t part of Bicycle Vacation Guide, but it will be part of the new Bikeverywhere website planned for spring of 2013.

With the arrival of spring and warmer weather, take advantage of the extra range that the North Star Commuter Rail offers for you and your bike. Families will especially enjoy taking the kids on the train to Anoka, then crossing a single street next to the station to hop on the Rum River Trail. From there you will enjoy car free riding along the banks of the Rum River. At the north end of the trail you can cross the river to Rivers Bend Park for a picnic before returning to the station. You will have over 5 hours to complete the six mile round trip, so pack lunch and fishing poles for a relaxing day.

Why so slow entering the 21st Century? Call it a personality type. I can spend days riding around researching bike routes, then weeks in front of a computer creating and updating maps, but I can’t spend a lot of time scanning through the endless entries of the Facebook world or telling the world about every detail of my rather boring life. It just doesn’t work for me.

On the other hand, there are a lot of interesting things to discover by bike, so I’ll be posting photos and stories about my discoveries. My focus will be on the Twin Cities, but if you discover something interesting in any of the areas mapped by Bikeverywhere, drop me a line. I’d be happy to post your photos and stories.

One more thing: Bikeverywhere is making some big changes. It’s too early to go into detail, but stay tuned.

In reality, it was a little tougher, with one 88 mile day and several days of 60 plus miles. I also rode through temperatures over 90 degrees, with high humidity and one day that started in the 40s, with 20 mph winds. Today, my last day, looks to be in the low 50s with a light drizzle.

I wandered off the planned route several times just because the road ahead looked better than the one I was on. I also spent several mid-days laying on picnic tables in the shade whle waiting for the most intense heat and sunlight of the day to pass. Met a Mennonite family and talked with them as I was buying asparagus directly from their garden and spent an hour in a bar, drinking a beer and eating pork rib sandwiches as my phone charged in an outlet. Spent one night in a campsite next to a gurgling, boulder-filled river and a couple of nights in a state park with warm showers. Those are the experiences that make a bike trip for me. Mega miles and extreme conditions test your limits and provide their own kind of experience, but they don’t work for me.

I finish this afternoon. Total miles will be approximately 370. My only regret is that the trip wasn’t longer. It takes several days just to settle into the routine, and my trip was broken up with a visit to family- enjoyable, but it diisrupted the flow I was developing. I’m hungry for another tour.

My apologies to anyone who didn’t get their orders fulfilled immediately while I was on vacation. I made the best arrangements I could think of, but some things fell through the cracks.

My original plan was to ride the Mountain Bay Trail from Wausau, Wisconsin to Green Bay, but that changed a couple of weeks ago when I had the chance to test ride the eastern end of the trail. The ride began at the end of an all day rain. The first thirty miles were on paved road, then I jumped on the trail. It took only a couple of meters for me to realize that my speed on the trail would be permanently reduced from about 16 mph to 11 mph, and even that reduced speed required a substantial increase in effort. The trail in this area, near Shawano, looks and feels like a jeep trail with two narrow tracks, soft wet gravel and occasional puddles. I turned off at the first cross road that went in the direction I was heading.

Wisconsin has an extensive network of paved back roads, some of them with as little as 50 cars per day, or one every half hour. Central Wisconsin was flattened 10,000 years ago by glaciers, so the road system is pretty much in a grid. With a resource like that, all I had to do to get to my destination was ride generally northwest by going first north, then west and making my turns almost at random until I neared my destination. For me this is the essence of bicycle touring- to get from Point A to Point B, but not necessarily in a straight line. I look forward to a week of similar meanderings.

• Looking for a casual ride and plenty of relaxation? Try the Rum River Loop from the Anoka Station. The trail starts across the street from the station, follows the Rum River north to Bunker Hills Rd, then crosses the river and drops into Rivers Bend. The round trip is about 12 miles, allowing plenty of time for lounging along the river or buying ice cream and hanging out in downtown Anoka.
• How about an overnight trip that isn’t more than 20 miles each way? Take Northstar to the Big Lake Station, ride to Lake Maria State Park, then spend the night at one of their walk-in campsites or camper cabins. Return the next day and pick up the train.
• Feeling strong? Take the train out to any station and ride all the way back to Minneapolis. The longest distance, from the Big Lake Station, is 55 miles. We’ve got two different routes mapped for you.

We’ve mapped out big loops and small ones, routes that follow country roads and routes that take in local trails. The brochure includes train fares, first arrivals and last departures, destinations, points of interest and local riding conditions. As a matter-of-fact, there is so much information, including our unbeatable maps, that each pdf is too large to download from the site. We’ll send it to your email address using YouSendIt. Check out the jpgs on the product page for samples of the route maps and information available for each station.

This is the perfect antidote to riding the same old loops again this weekend, and you don’t have to drive to get there, either!

Printed brochures are available on standard paper or tear and water resistant paper. Choose the delivery style that best fits your needs: Electronic delivery or hard copy.

Bikeverywhere has been creating maps for the MLRA since 2007.  Routes vary in length from as little as 4 miles to over 75 miles. The longer rides start at the Summerfest grounds and head north along the shore of Lake Michigan. Shorter rides start at the same place and head south along the Lakeshore.

Bikeverywhere will be on hand at the finish line. Stop by our booth to say hi.

This update is part of the ongoing research that keeps Bikeverywhere maps as current as possible. The irregular pattern to the minor updates reflects the realities of publishing. When I run out of maps, I reprint and incorporate any changes since the last update.  I don’t usually make a big deal of the change. The cover and ISBN numbers are the same. The only way to tell the difference is to look at the back cover. Just above the price you will see “Rev 8.2.”  The original version doesn’t have these words.

This is the first time I’ve labeled the revision numbers, and ironically, I did it wrong.  This is the 9th edition of the map so I should have labeled it Rev 9.2.  And those of you who care about this sort of thing at all will wonder “Why 9.2 instead of 9.1?”  The answer is that I did another minor update about a year ago, but didn’t label it. Check your map. If it has a break where the I-35W bridge collapsed, it is 9.0, the major update. Rev 9.1 reconnected the bridge. It also has other small updates, but it would require some deep sleuthing to discover those changes.