Trippin' with Susan Straley

 I decided to bike to some water falls.  When I googled waterfalls near me, there were quite a few.  It appeared the closest one in the cluster was Kakabika Falls near Watersmeet and White City. I packed up last night and then put my bike bags in the van so I could get an early start.  Google said the falls was 44 miles away and then I have to bike to a campsite which is another 12 miles. This morning I was up and loading the bike by 6:00 a.m. a bit nervous.  I am used to using googlemaps for getting around.  But what happens if I need to re-configure my route and I don't have cell service?  I don't have a paper map, and if I did, even the detail maps don't tell me what roads are passable or bike friendly. Last night I made a turn-by-turn list for me to follow.   First I moved the van to make it harder to steal Lilac if some bad person was so inclined.  I almost knocked over the bike!   Starting from the campground I couldn’t get a...

 I said goodbye to my friends Sandy and John this morning.  Lilac and I headed to a campsite in Villas County, Wisconsin.  There is a network of connecting bicycle trails here.  One goes through Boulder Junction. The trails here are paved, curvy and hilly.  The area is planning more trails too.  It's a popular biking area with touristy towns, lots of clear lakes, and ATV trails. Lilac in our campsite by a babbling brook. The Trail Tour Plan is non-existent. I have not decided where I will bike.  The destination will be another campground for trying out my tent and sleeping bag and such.  I am about 75 miles from Lake Superior, says Googlemaps.  A bit too far at this point in my training.  I may drive to a town and find a place to park my van overnight while I ride to That big lake. We’ll see.   I will post from my phone if I have cell service. For now the campsite Lilac and I are in has a road between it and the lake.  There ...

Life can go along and all the blessings, the joy and fun can seem ho-hum after a while.  Then something happens, a goal is reached, a plan takes shape, a fork is decided on. The thrill returns. Today is just such a day.   I have been in the Rhinelander area now for over a month!   Long enough that mushrooms are growing inside my screen tent. West Bay Campground is wooded with lots of maple, oak and birch.  The campground is mostly quiet. Three times I have driven to the Bearskin Trail and rode the trail.  Two of those times I rode solo from the woods into the town of Minocqua.   The trail is 18 miles long and has a crushed gravel surface.  One end is in the bustling and touristy town of Minocqua, and the other end is out in the quiet woods near the the intersection of Hwy K and Hwy 51. I love the stories of the early rail days that are told on the kiosks along the trail.  When they were trying to create a causeway through the swamp ...

It is nice to be in one place.  No days spent packing up and driving to the next place.     Physical Training   I have mapped out a nice nine-mile route that I ride my bike on several mornings a week.  Eventually I will add weight and practice the hilly route loaded.     I am training my body for the 300 plus mile tour I will be doing in September with friend Joan.  We will be riding the Allegheny Gap Trail and the C&O trail.  The C&O Trail has some very rough surfaces, so I am training on my two-wheel bicycle.  Since I arrived in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, I have not even removed my recumbent tricycle from the van! I set some physical goals for myself and went to meet with a personal trainer at Anytime Fitness.  Sydney is a slim young woman with a physical training degree and a cheerleader inside her.   I told her I wanted to be able to jump up onto something.  I told her that I was afraid to even jump onto...

On June 12th I moved into the campsite in Rhinelander where I will spend a whole month.  I am ready to stop, to rest, to get into a healthy routine again.   Last I wrote to you I mentioned toward the end that I had decided to sell my townhouse in Florida.  More data, information, and offers have come in and now I am confused again.  I will write about that toward the end of this letter.  If you don't care what I have been doing between my last writing and this one, skip down to the bottom subtitled "Decided/Undecided" ha ha. Too Much of a Good Thing I love people. I need a little social most days.  Since I last wrote to you I had lots of reunions and fun with fantastic people.  People with big characters and something to teach me.  People who make me feel valued, people who inspire me.  It has been fun, delightful, interesting, and ... I am sad to say ... too much.  I didn't space out all my meet-ups and so day after day in a short ...