On Tuesday morning we left the cabin at Miniature Lake with heavy hearts. As usual, we drove on Tuesday on hilly back roads to Danbury, where we did some shopping and spent the night at a campground.
A day later we started the ride on the southern part of the Gandy Dancer Trail. This is a disused railroad track which has a rough roadway for ATV's in the northern part and a well maintained roadway in the southern part which is wonderful to ride with a bike and trailer. In addition to the good roadway, the trail had other advantages: as a former railroad line, there were no significant grades, mostly it was lined with trees on the left and right, so there was shade and little headwind. As we passed through villages, there were easily accessible playgrounds in many cases.
On the trail we camped in Lewis, where there is a bar and campground about 200m from the trail.
After the second day on the trail, the beautiful route ended much too soon.
In St. Croix Falls we pitched our tent in the state park. Unfortunately we missed to do some shopping when we left the trail. There we would have been still close to the shopping possibilities. Arriving at the campground we realized that it would be over 100 meters of elevation gain back and for that our motivation was limited.
With this realization, we flexibly rescheduled and walked to the village after showering. Unfortunately, St. Croix Falls had seen better times. Many stores decorated their windows with nailed boards. Since we could find only one bar, which served presumably frozen pizza, we extended our search radius. On the other side of the St. Croix River we found a bar with real food in Taylor Falls. The 20min walk was worth it! On the way back, Ariki then enjoyed his first night hike 😊