![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
The can-do spirit of the 19th century can be felt everywhere along a 19½-mile stretch of the Chippewa River.
Jean Brunet built his own dam and sawmill in 1836 and piloted his first raft of lumber to Prairie du Chien himself. Jacob Leinenkugel arrived in 1867 and founded the Spring Brewery. Ezra Cornell bought up logging and mineral rights in the area, which became the logging center of the world in the 1880s, although the profits went to Ithaca, N.Y., where he’d founded Cornell University.
But a bald eagle was the feistiest of them all. Old Abe was traded to a local farmer by a band of Chippewa in 1861 and sent
into the Civil War as a mascot for the Eighth Wisconsin. He served in 42 battles, where he was said to have spread his wings
and screamed in support of the troops, more fiercely as the fighting escalated.
As often as not, vacationing couples find they're in a mixed marriage: One likes to shop, one likes to bike or hike.
What to do? I've seen dozens of men patiently waiting on benches as their wives and girlfriends scour the shops, although these days, women are just as likely to ditch their husbands to travel with their girlfriends.
But it needn't be an either/or proposition. Pick one of the destinations below, and you'll find both great shopping and great riding (or running, or skating) routes, along with great restaurants in which to relax afterward.
On Wisconsin's new Badger State Trail, no one goes home hungry.
Starting from the edge of Madison, the 33-mile trail plunges into Little Switzerland, taking bicyclists past a gantlet of cheese shops, meat markets, bakeries and breweries.
But the Badger is best known for its 1,200-foot-long tunnel, cut through solid limestone in 1887. It curves in the middle, so bicyclists without a good flashlight will find themselves in total darkness, their nerves shot by pigeons bursting out of hidden crannies.
For more than a century, people have marveled at the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis.
It's not so much the beauty of the lakes, though they're glorious. It's more the fact that ordinary folk can walk, bike, swim and play around them — all of them.
It almost wasn't so. Back in 1882, landscape architect Horace Cleveland had to argue his case for putting aside land on the city's lakes, creeks and river.
When people think of bicycling in Wisconsin, the famous Elroy-Sparta State Trail often is first to pop into their minds. But
the state has added many, many trails since the Elroy-Sparta debuted in 1967, and it's time to try them.
All of the trails listed below use finely crushed limestone, except as noted. They're suitable for touring bikes, though a wider tire is better. Chip-sealed trails are like asphalt but softer, and can be nearly as smooth because they don't become pitted.
On state trails, passes are $4 daily, $20 annual; passes also are good in winter on ski trails. Rates on county and city trails vary; many are free, including the Interurban and Oak Leaf.
The Iron Range never has been for anyone who didn’t want to sweat.
Ever since iron ore was discovered on the shores of Lake Vermilion, this strip of Minnesota has drawn people who wanted to work. One of the world’s richest deposits of iron ore lay under the forest, and waves of Finns, Slovenes, Italians, Swedes, Croatians, Poles, Germans and Serbs came to shovel it out.
On the Vermillion Range, hard ore lay in vertical shafts, and the Soudan mine near Ely eventually reached seven football fields into the Earth. To the south, softer ore lay along a wooded ridge of hills, an exposed stretch of the Laurentian Divide that the Ojibwe called the sleeping giant, or Mesabi. The Mesabi Range runs nearly 120 miles, from just east of Grand Rapids to Hoyt Lakes, and its ore could be dug out of open pits.
Everything that’s worth doing, you can do along Chicago’s lakefront.
Seniors in Speedos climb out of Lake Michigan after swimming laps. Chess players hunch over boards in a 1957 pavilion that
looks like the Jetsons’ carport. College girls fumble with kayaks in the shadow of yachts, and boys play beach
volleyball.
Overhead, a biplane pulls a flapping beer banner through the sky.
Is this Fort Lauderdale? No, but you couldn’t tell from the string of beaches, golf courses and marinas.
Mankato is easy to overlook, even though it's home to a state university, gateway to the prairie and prominent in Minnesota history.
Downtown is girdled by highways and train tracks, befitting Mankato's longtime status as a trade town. Its streets are quiet, except when the many bars throw a block party.
It's not on the beaten path, either. Motorists headed down the Minnesota River to New Ulm take the shortcut from St. Peter, and people headed for Pipestone or the Black Hills use interstates.
To a bicyclist setting out on the Lake Wobegon Trail, there are few signs that this is a storied landscape.
There’s a lake surrounded by cattails and frequented by fishermen and canoeists. There’s another lake across the road, where teen-agers flirt and toddlers play in the sand.
Down the trail, a clump of showy lady slippers pops out of the weeds. A great blue heron rises from a slough with languid flaps. A painted turtle scrapes at the dirt next to the trail, making a nest for its eggs.
Cruising along western Minnesota’s Central Lakes Trail, it’s tempting to keep a scorecard.
Egret, five. Blue herons, seven. Beavers, three. Turtles, two. Loons, three. Pelicans, 20. Giant concrete coots, one.
Lots of warblers, hurtling over the trail like guided missiles, and warbler-sized dragonflies. Chipmunks racing the bike across blacktop. Patches of wild rose, and fountain grasses waving their pink heads in the breeze.
It's as wide as seven axhandles and a plug of tobacco, and as smooth as a flapjack griddle.
It unfurls over a landscape dotted with lakes created, according to north-woods legend, by the tracks of a giant lumberjack and his faithful blue ox.
It's the Paul Bunyan State Trail, and it links Minnesota's main Bunyan shrines: Brainerd, where a winking, talking Paul welcomed generations of tourists to "Paul Bunyan's Playground'' until it was moved to a nearby theme park in 2003. Hackensack, where a midget Paul Jr. waves next to his behemoth mother, Lucette Diana Kensack. Bemidji, where a stern 18-foot Paul started the colossus fad in 1937.
There are certain bicycle trails that inspire loyalty in those who ride them.
For many, it’s the trail that’s closest to home. For others, it’s the trail that runs by a really fine restaurant. And for some, it’s the route with the most wildlife.
One of my favorite trails, the 14½-mile Red Cedar State Trail out of Menomonie, WIs., has all of these things and more. It’s one of the least crowded trails, because the crushed-limestone surface keeps some people away. And it’s one of the longest, counting the 30-mile Chippewa State Trail, which takes up where the Red Cedar leaves off and continues on to Eau Claire and Durand.
As people who like to ride bikes know, an organized bicycle tour is one of the great deals of vacation travel.
Why pay big bucks to an "adventure'' outfitter when you can join a local tour for very little? You could pay Timberline Adventures of Denver $1,800 for its tour of Missouri's Katy Trail — or you could pay Missouri state parks $250 for the same thing, albeit with accommodations in tents, not hotels.
For anyone who's reasonably fit, bike tours are the best possible way to see the countryside, and sponsors do everything for participants except pedal and set up tents.
It was a sunny day in southeastern Minnesota, and everywhere I looked, there were Babes.
Babes bombing along bike trails, Babes prowling the shops of Lanesboro, Babes laughing over white wine in the inn where I was staying. They were the Fat Bottom Girls Cycle Club from Des Moines, also known as Babes on Bikes, and they were having a swell time riding the smooth, scenic trails of the Root River Valley.
I took a group photo of them in front of the Jailhouse Inn in Preston and inquired about their name; I didn’t, ahem, see a fat bottom anywhere.
The pelicans and cormorants of the Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge are used to train whistles and the distant popping of trap guns. But they're even more used to the whir of bicycle gears.
Each fall, birds and bicyclists migrate to the same place along the Mississippi River in Wisconsin. Here, the 24-mile Great River State Trail starts in the refuge, skirts Perrot State Park and goes through the river town of Trempealeau before entering the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife and Fish Refuge and then the prairie outside Onalaska.
Onalaska, just north of La Crosse, grew up around a lumber mill and today is where the citizens of its hemmed-in sister city come to dine, shop and fish.
Going hiking on the Superior Hiking Trail? You'll want to pack sturdy boots, thick socks, water bottles, maps and rain gear.
Oh, and don't forget the bikes.
There's a new trail on the North Shore, a nice flat one, too. It's the paved Gitchi-Gami, with a 17½-mile stretch that links Gooseberry Falls to Split Rock State Park and Silver Bay Bay and a 6½-mile stretch that links Schroeder to Temperance River State Park and Tofte.
For Minnesota bicyclists, there are two seasons: winter and trail construction.
That's a good thing, because bicycle tourists crave more trails and towns crave more bicycle tourists. That little ribbon of asphalt, they've discovered, can put them on the map.
"In our area, it seems one city after another is fighting for trails," says Stearns County parks director Chuck Wocken.
In eastern Wisconsin, the map of bicycle trails is starting to look like the spokes of a wheel.
From Green Bay, trails radiate west to Wausau, east to Door County and south toward the Fox Cities. From Milwaukee, trails go
north toward Sheboygan and west to Madison. From Madison, trails head west for Dodgeville. And it won't be long before all of
these trails connect in a vast spider web of asphalt and crushed limestone. See Wisconsin's bike trails: a guide.
"Sometimes, your head is just spinning," says Mike Kading, director of parks and recreation in the Fox Cities town of Menasha, which now is connected to Oshkosh and the Wiouwash State Trail by the Friendship State Trail.