Day 9/ end of Week 1 - The journey towards Lake Superior and Duluth.

The final ride of Week 1, for me on the tour, took us from Hill City to Duluth and a certain part of my anatomy has been rejoicing in a day off on the Sunday!!

I am currently sat in MacDonalds doing this blog as we have not had access to the internet in the places we have stayed for 3 days. How on earth did we survive, I hear you ask??!!

For the last week of the ride I have been working on the ‘church clean-up’ team and whilst I was doing some final vacuuming around the Hill City School we stayed in, a frog decided to take my cycling helmet as a new home!! Fortunately this was pointed out before I put the helmet on!! (He/She looked most disappointed when I picked my helmet up) 🐸

This was a 79 mile ride and, for me, this was the hardest so far. Fortunately, the amount of traffic had subsided given that it was July 4th and Independence Day, but the the first half of the ride, I rode alone and for a good part of it I felt quite lonely with seemingly no-one ahead of me and no-one behind me. Not very enjoyable. I did even wonder if I had made a wrong turn!

Just after the first rest stop we crossed the mighty Mississippi River, only this was not so much ‘mighty’ and more ‘mini’ as we were in a northern state and the river had to travel hundreds of miles to eventually end up at New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

At the second rest stop, I met up again with LeeAnn and from that point on, we rode together which made the ride much easier to enjoy as we shared the role of taking the lead as, once again, we faced headwinds as we headed east.

As we arrived on the outskirts of Duluth we made a wrong turn but discovered this rather beautiful waterfall

Just around the corner we caught our first glance of Lake Superior and then we rode down into Duluth to St James Catholic Church where our accommodation in the gym would see us through the weekend.

The church had asked us to move out from the church whilst services were being held so a good number of us took the van to go a family home of relatives of one of our riders. Wow! What a fabulour place!! We also had the opportunity to watch some of the World Cup TV coverage and watch France squeeze past Paraguay. I took up a comfortable position on the sofa and promptly fell asleep!! 😴 (An incriminating photo was taken of this sporting event!!)

I awoke sufficiently to participate in a group photograph before returning to the church building and a day off. 🤠