We woke up this morning at the campground to our coldest morning in a long time, 57 degrees. The heat has broken enough that Katie and I were feeling cold. Everyone but Chris got a great night's sleep. For some reason, Chris could not sleep and spent his night walking to the bathroom and saving the snacks on his bike from the coons. The rest of us did not know this on waking up. We usually cannot make a move without Chris being awake and ready to get moving. All of us thought that Chris was already gone to the bathroom or something getting ready. We were all up and moving and packing, when all of a sudden we started hearing grumbling coming from the tent. It was Chris just waking up. We were almost packed up before he finally heard us! This NEVER happens!

Today's story is all about trying to stay cool while biking in the mid 80's and high humidity. Here are a few ways we attempted to get by...

Chris gives up and just stands in the cooler.

Roger eats a gigantic strawberry ice cream sundae.

HEADWIND...need I say any more. We were doing so well with Mother Nature and now she has decided to show us who is truly boss. The soaking rain at the campground and now two days of almost all headwinds...enough Mother Nature, we get it already! We had beautiful weather otherwise today, no rain and lots of sun.

We started the day with breakfast in Vassar at McDonald's. Thankfully we got there early enough. About the time church was getting out, we were finishing our food and leaving just as the crowd came in. Chris ate 1300 calories for breakfast and still left the place hungry!

We had a lot to dry out after yesterday's rain! So much for getting to bed early for a quick start. The campground owners left the game room open for us to sleep in last night. We dried out as much as we could. Then this morning it was time to dry out and remove mud from our tents. We had plopped them in the laundry room to make sure they didn't blow away.

What a way to start our 10th year of marriage! Chris and I will be celebrating our anniversary on June 21st. What better way to celebrate than take the best people we know on a bike trip with us.

SHERMAN HAS BEEN CONQUERED!!!

We made it to the top of Sherman Pass at an elevation of 5575. We had 4568 feet of climbing today. The beginning of the pass was not very steep and we were doing rather well. But as we closed in on the top it became much steeper, most of the top was 6% grade and we were down to a crawl. Katie and TJ did the 27 miles up in 4 hours, I made it in 4 1/2, and Chris and Roger at 5 hours.

Today officially marks the longest bike trip of our lives! We have passed our total miles from MRT two years ago.

We stayed in an awesome room last night at the Riverview Motel in Ione. We woke up about 7:30 and got on the road at 9:00. This is pretty quick for us. It usually takes us two hours to pack, eat, and get on the road.

We left about 9:30 this morning after having breakfast in our room. We were not in too big of a hurry because it was raining. When it seemed to clear up, we hit the road.

This morning we stopped at a volunteer fire house. They were out cleaning all the equipment for an open house to the public tomorrow. They let us use the bathroom and we found out one of the guys had hunting land in Wisconsin, near Black River Falls, so he knew where we were from. We are far enough away that the only cities we can usually tell people are Madison or Wisconsin Dells. Sometimes we can just say "the middle of the state," so it was kind of neat to meet someone who could place us in our city.

We are all feeling much better with clean clothes and good showers. It was a late night though to get everything clean. We did not wake up very early, so the start was not too early. It was suppose to be a hot day, but we needed the sleep too.

Hwy 93 was not a good way to start the day. It was very busy, no shoulder, a crumbled edge of the road, and a terrible graveled/ muddy edge. We were in the gravel a ridiculous number of times because cars would not move over for us. We got off the hwy according to our route as many times as possible. It was so bad Katie even dumped off her bike into the grass after being pushed into the gravel by the cars and then hitting a big rut. She was not hurt and her bike was okay, but the road and traffic were awful.