The Bicycle Adventure Club - Come Ride With Us!

Heart of the Driftless Region

July 7th to July 20th

Ride Director: Frank Hanson
Ride Co-Director: Linda Kimball
Ride Driver: Jim Doran
Report by: Diane Cahalan

This 2-week cycling trip delivered everything and more based on the ride description “along beautiful rivers and over rolling hills in the rugged, beautifully-sculpted Driftless Region. You’ll cross the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers several times and experience the unique topography of the area from low-traffic rural roads and dedicated bike trails. You’ll climb challenging hills and bluffs and enjoy exhilarating descents.” The route took us through Wisconsin, into Iowa and north to Minnesota and back to Lacrosse Wisconsin. And yes, there were several challenging hills with an average day of 2,010 feet gain each day, many shorter steep climbs and descents. Yet fun fun fun! We each logged over 28,000 of elevation gain in 12 days.

The Driftless is the hilly landscape topography of a 24,000 square mile area along the Mississippi River where Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois meet. This area was left untouched by the last glacier that covered most of Wisconsin. The Driftless Region is free from the characteristic glacial deposits known as “drift”—deposits of rock, gravel, sand, and silt that retreating glaciers leave behind. The landscape is characterized by tall bluffs, forested ridges, narrow ravines, and deeply carved valleys cut into limestone bedrock by the world’s largest concentration of cold-water streams. 

We pedaled both bike paths and the wonderful paved roads of the countryside—the dairy-to-market back roads. Leaving Madison via bike paths and through the University of Wisconsin campus, once in the country, we found ditches were full of orange lilies, Queen Ann’s Lace, phlox, yellow and purple coneflower, blazing star, black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, prairie spiderwort, and many yellow flowers. Numerous bike paths were canopied by silver maple, river birch, green and black ashes, hackberry, swamp white oak, and eastern cottonwood which kept us cool in the Midwest humidity. Each day of riding provided lovely scenery along a river or through the country with sightings of Amish men working to stack hay or women driving buggies.

Our accommodations included a night in Baraboo at the Ringling House B&B where you could view the history of their circus life in both photos and writings. This house was built in 1901 and the residence of Charles Ringling, one of the five Ringling brothers.  Our night in Lanesboro Minnesota was at the Stone Mill Hotel and Suites built in 1885 of limestone. It began as an ice storage facility with eggs and poultry processed on the above four levels. Next a grain company opened in the 1950s. In 1999 the stone building and the feed mill were renovated and opened in 2001 for overnight lodging. One of the original ice saws is in the breakfast area and ice tongs hang on the fireplace chimney in the Stone Mill lobby area.

We experienced two hiccups on this tour: a road under construction thus pedaling on dirt, wet dirt and some mud. Second, in Viroqua, Wisconsin, the original over-night stay was accidently cancelled. The owner worked with these three accommodations and we had a bed to sleep in! After all—it’s Bicycle ADVENTURE Club!

The Hotel Fortney built in 1899 and renovated in 2020 providing a modern update to timeless architecture. Queen Anne Stay is a Victorian house and the Main Street Lodge is built above the towns bicycle store, providing a modern interior. The evening started with happy hour and then everyone walked to The Driftless Café which provides a farm-to-market menu. The dinner menu changes nightly as the food is provided by 200 certified organic farms in Vernon County. We all left smiling.

Chalet Landhaus in New Glarus was our last night before pedaling back to Madison.  The Driftless provided us an experience to enjoy the fruits of settlers from Germany, Ireland, Poland, Norway, Switzerland and the Amish. After all the hills we climbed, we ate like kings and queens!