72 miles.  Good biking day … for the most part.

Our route stayed on State 35, The Great River Road, from the beginning almost to our hotel in Onalaska, La Crosse.  We never strayed far from the Mississippi or the train tracks so it was flat most of the way with a decent shoulder and smooth pavement.

When we had our three day stay in Glacier National Park waiting for the pass to open we attended a Park Ranger lecture about bald eagles and learned that at one point, the total US population of the national bird was 480 mating pairs, endangered by the use of DDT.  Genetic studies place the minimum number of mating pairs necessary for any species’ survival somewhere around 460 so bald eagles were truly on the knife edge of extinction. Now there are estimated to be over 5000 nesting pairs in the continental US with an estimated 70,000 birds in North America. Yesterday when we stopped for lunch we saw two bald eagles swooping low and landing on a spit of land in the river. Today we saw two more of them, one in a tree next to the road. We also saw lots of vultures but the bald eagle’s survival is an arresting story.

We stopped for lunch at a fruit and vegetable stand and were told of a more scenic short cut to La Crosse so, against the cyclists’ rule never to trust a non-cyclist for route information, we followed her advice and enjoyed a few miles of country road cycling away from the zooming trucks on the state road.

After we rejoined old 35 for the last run in to town we made the decision to follow the business loop instead of the busy highway. Cue the “Fail” buzzer! We had to fight for road space along a 5 mile construction zone with no shoulder, no place to pull off and impatient motorists and truck drivers squeezing by us with little or no room to do so. It was a very stressful end to the day.

Tomorrow we will be on one of the first rail to trail bike paths in the country that, we are assured, is in better repair than the reviews