By Josh Hendrickson
Day 1. At about 6:00am Josh Kilen, Artie McLain, Ryan Putt, Jeremy Meyers & Myself met at Perkins on Highway 7 to put all the stuff in Randy’s van. There was an ex-Mini-School student along, Terry Smith. After everything was loaded up we left for Northfield.
When we got to Northfield we ate breakfast at a Perkins look-a-like. The food was not too bad. After breakfast we drove to Nerstrand Wood State Park to set up camp. We finally got camp set up. Then we left for Northfield.
The ride to Northfield seemed really long because of the killer head wind. There were lots of hills, but the worst were the long steady climbs with a head wind of about 15 mph. Then after a long ride of ups and downs and gusts up to 20mph we finally made it to Northfield.
Northfield was a pretty small town, but there were two colleges, Carelton and St. Olaf. The Carelton campus seemed really small. St. Olaf was a lot bigger and a lot nicer. All the buildings were similar in their style. We had to find out things on each school like number of students, cost, courses and stuff like that. College is not one of the cheapest things on the planet.
We went to the bank that stopped the Jesse James gang, then we cruised around Northfield for awhile. Randy gave us some questions to find the answers for like what industries are in Northfield. There was a small protest at the armory about something in L.A. The protesters handed out a sheet of chants that we were supposed to join in on. It was all pretty stupid.
Day 2. Randy attempted to get us up 7:00am but it took awhile. The night before we had put the bikes on top of the van, so we were ready to go right after everybody was up. We ate breakfast in Cannon Falls at some bar & grill. After we were done eating breakfast we filled up the water bottles there and headed out to the Cannon Valley Trail. We rode on that just back up into town and then we took a series of highways to Red Wing.
Red Wing was a cool little town. We went to the St. James Hotel. Its an old renovated hotel that is about 100 years old. Then we split up. Randy and Terry walked around, the other four rode up to the high school, and I just rode around downtown Red Wing. As I was riding, I rode past this bike shop and in the window was a TREK 9000, a mountain bike with suspension.
We re-grouped in front of the grocery store. Randy and a couple others ran in to get some stuff to make sandwiches. We took the stuff down to the bank of the river and ate lunch. While we were there, there was a Indian ceremonial dance that was part of Indian Week. After lunch we were finally ready to head back to Cannon Falls. This time we took the Cannon Valley Trail all the way back. The trail goes by village sites, burial mounds, and the site of a train derailment. When we got back to where the car was parked we loaded up the bikes and went back into town. Then everybody split up again to find out things about Cannon Falls. After about a half an hour to an hour, we regrouped and went back to camp. This day was my favorite.
Day 3. Once again we had to get up early and we didn’t get to eat breakfast until after an hour of riding. We ate at some restaurant with a breakfast menu. The food was really good. After everyone got done eating breakfast we started riding. That’s all we did. No town to ride through. No nothing. We rode up some path a ways and then turned around and went back to Fairbault. Then we rode back to camp, packed up and left. We got back to school, unloaded and then that was it.
So after a trip like this with winds from 15-30 mph and some pretty killer hills, it was, in a way, nice to see Minnetonka High again. I would definitely go on another bike trip another time.