Day 44 Tuesday 8/18/09 Herbster, WI to Saxon, WI

Day 44 Tuesday 8/18/09
Herbster, WI to Saxon, WI
73 Miles
2036 total miles

Started the day with some coffee on the beach which I shared with some camping neighbors who needed a morning boost as much as I did! Headed east along 13 to the little village of Cornucopia which is home to the Fish Lipps Café which serves up a great omelet and also boasts of the northernmost Post Office in Wisconsin. Who knows if it will remain so with the upcoming consolidation and planned disappearance of over 1400 PO's around the country? The big news in Wisconsin today isn't Obama's health care concessions, but rather Brett Favre's plans to join the Vikings for $12-14 million. Perhaps there's still hope for my contract! From Cornucopia, I wound my way around the Bayfield peninsula, past the Red Cliff Ojibway reservation and into picturesque Bayfield where I found Tom Hart's world-famous Bayfield Bike Route, bicycle shop extraordinaire. Tom and his assistant Joey were extremely helpful In giving my bike a much-needed tune-up, chain clean and adjustment, which served me in good stead for the rest of the day's ride. I wished I could have stayed longer and explored Bayfield longer, but needed to make some time before reaching Ontonagon, still more than 110 miles away. I shall return someday Bayfield! I arrived in Ashland, WI around 7 p.m. and found that I still really needed to keep riding so that I would reach my intended destination the next day. I pushed into the Bad River Ojibway reservation and thought I might be able to find some camping there or barring that, a room in the casino hotel. I arrived there at around 8 p.m.. and gathering night fall only to find that the hotel was full and no camping was available, so I pushed on another dozen miles to the campground at the top of long Birch Hill which I reached after dark, exhausted but satisfied to find an open bar where I enjoyed some cold ones before pitching the tent for the night.