Fun route I rode last fall

[Erik]

Greetings, Grinders!

It seems this Googly Group is pretty sleepy, so I thought I'd throw something in here just to shake out the cobwebs.

I mapped out a nice ride last fall, taking advantage of some county plat maps to link together an almost purely gravel ride.

Googly Map link:

http://tinyurl.com/46b9dst

As I describe in the map, "44 mile ride, south and east of Northfield, MN. First mile and last five are blacktop. The rest is gravel, except for about a quarter mile of Cty Rd 14. Lots of nice scenery, including a handful of country cemeteries, the famous Valley Grove "dueling churches", and more decrepit barns than you can shake a stick at."

Mostly flat, a few easy hills, and generally a nice old time.  Zero civilization once you get out of Northfield.

I've taken to scouring county maps, treasure hunting for gravel.  This was my first cohesive route, and I have a few more queued up for the spring.  I'd welcome any suggestions for gravel rides in the 30-130 mile range within an hour of the cities.

Cheers,
Erik

[Bill Connell]

Looks like a fun route, thanks for sharing! It would be great to build
up a library of mapped routes like this.

Bill

--
Bill Connell
St. Paul, MN

[Erik]

I agree.  Although needing to drive somewhere in order to enjoy a bike ride kinda sucks, it's nice to get out of the rut of my normal routes and explore some new bit of countryside.  I think of these as my occasional "vacation destination" rides.

It would be nice to have handy list of routes on hand for reference or inspiration.  Not sure of how one would accomplish a user friendly method of this in Googly world..

On that note, here's another route that I mapped out a while ago (but haven't ridden yet).  As soon as the gravel firms up (and I HTFU) I'm gonna head down to Coulee country to test my mettle on this:

http://tinyurl.com/4gtap2e

Hopefully as a training ride before the Almanzo.  I can't imagine Chris has anything worse in store for me than this?