Battle Lake, MN

It’s been so long since we’ve been in a town over 1000 people that trying to get out of Fargo turned out to be a challenge. We followed the directions of our reliable MapQuest route, but it led us astray, and we ended up forging a trail around wild rice fields and through treacherous dirt roads (more like quicksand) and added 7 miles to our 90 mile day.
After a quick stop along a truck route highway around 20 miles, we started our climb into Minnesota. As Renzo said, “Woah. Look at the trees.” We’ve seen a lot of great sunsets and beautiful, never-ending horizon lines throughout Montana and North Dakota, but to suddenly be in a place with trees again was refreshing. Minnesota is the state with 1000 lakes, which translates to… look left, and look right, and within three minutes of riding you’ll have seen a slew of different lake/ponds. They actually sold leeches in a little locally owned convenient store that we stopped in (for bait…? Blickey). Throughout the day today, we were all gazing around at the scenery with out mouths open. I think Parker caught a bug.
There’s definitely a decrease in road kill, which we’re all happy to see, and the roads are suddenly much hillier. Parker, the birthday boy, led us up 30 miles of ups and downs tirelessly, with a brief stop to talk to a local who participates annually in the MS Tram, and by 4:00… WE HAD MADE IT.
We’re halfway across the country! We emerged through the dust, up over one last grunt of a hill, to see our trailer parked in the driveway of a farmhouse. Ironically, the town 4 miles down the road from our halfway point is called Maine, and the owner of the house had grown up in Gardner, Maine. It had just been luck that Mary and her 7 year old son happened to be at home, caught us parked down the street, and invited us to eat on their lawn and use facilities. Matthew, the seven year old, is a BMX prodigy. He showed us all of his moves on one of his seven mountain bikes (3 of which don’t work, but he’s a “fix-it-man”, so he’s going to patch them up).
Our destination was the Baptist Church in Battle Lake, Minnesota, where we are all cuddled up on the floor of the church, full of Wild West Barbeque dinner and birthday cake. Happy 17th, Parker! “Fast and erratic, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

by Sarah