Still A Little Soggy

I started out riding this morning in a fog/mist. Every few miles, I had to stop to clear the tiny droplets of water off my sunglasses so I could see. Luckily, that cleared up after an hour-and-a-half or so. I still had to contend with threatening clouds and wet roads for a good portion of the day. Between the soggy conditions and the fact that the next town past where I stopped for the day was another 26 miles, I only logged 72.5 miles today. That's my shortest day since my triple-flat day into Dickinson, ND. I believe the weather is supposed to be improving now and I hope to get back to an 80+ mile day tomorrow.

Two days ago, I spotted one tree starting to turn orange. Yesterday, there were more trees turning to fall colors. Today, there were even more I only took one picture of a few trees turning orange:

Military Road near Hiles.
 
For at least a couple days, I've been seeing broad white areas painted across the roads. These are ATV crossings. There seems to be a whole network of ATV trails through the Northwoods. I believe the same trails double as snowmobile trails in the winter.
 
ATV crossing and trails through the Northwoods.
 
I found Lover's Lane near the town of Hiles.

Finally, I wanted to tell you about "hodags" (or maybe I'm not supposed to pluralize it with an 's'...maybe "hodag" is singular and plural, like "deer"). We're staying in Rhinelander this evening, which is the home of the hodag, a mythical Northwoods creature. There were many hodag statues in Rhinelander:
Hodag outside a bar.

County courthouse hodag.

The same hodag with the County Courthouse visible.

Hodag in front of the library.

This poor hodag is missing a fang and a horn. He's sitting outside a bar and he probably got into a dust-up with an enebriated bar patron.

Tomorrow I'm planning to ride from Crandon to Shawano, which is officially 92 miles. That may be a little optimistic.

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