Day nineteen

Clear Lake to Austin Minn.

The storms of the night eventually moved on. In the morning we packed up and headed into town for a great breakfast. Total cost was ten bucks. It would power us to Mason City. There we stopped at a bike shop and I purchased a set of front panniers. My loading system had made the bike tail heavy. The handling was less than optimum. The new addition would make packing easier and more efficient.

We had a late lunch at Chandlers. It was ho-hum at best. We hit the road and decided to simply go downwind. We were tired of the quartering headwinds and decided to go with the flow. We made 70 miles and crossed the Minnesota border. This was another milestone and gave us a feeling of having covered a vast distance.

We found a great store, the High Vee. It had lots of goodies that we hadn’t seen since Boulder. We stocked up on Emergen-C’s and other good munchies. It was late in the day and we decided to spend the night in town. There was a picnic shelter and utility buildings that gave us nice cover from sight. We started out sleeping under the stars but again were visited by Thor and his attendant rain. We scrambled under the picnic shelter and spent the night on picnic tables.