Oaks Lake

(More from Tuesday, July 7) In some ways my ride through southern Minnesota was like going back home, but as I was riding I confess I was thinking how I missed riding in some of the states closer to home, where the roads aren’t always as straight, wide, and in as good repair, and where the ditches are narrower and trees are allowed to grow closer to the road. Another thing I missed is all the farmsteads that lie close to the road. Even if they are not active farms any longer, I like looking at the houses, yards and outbuildings. It seems that in northern Iowa and Minnesota a greater portion of them are set back a ways from the road, at the end of a long lane, where riders-by like myself can’t get such a good look.

I had to be in a really hard-to-please mode not to enjoy these roads, though. The traffic was light and of very little bother.

Then, in Cottonwood County, I came to lake country. I hadn’t expected that. That was more like my favorite parts of Minnesota that I remembered from decades ago.

The lake is named Oaks Lake, but the trees are cottonwoods. Oaks was the name of an early farmer/settler in the area.

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This was at almost the 80-mile mark on my ride to Walnut Grove. I wasn’t in need of another nap, but this was a good place to sit and listen to the wind in the trees. There was no place to sit down, so I hauled out my ground cloth and found a place free of poison ivy. I lay down for a few minutes, taking care not to look like a corpse so nobody from a passing car would find it necessary to stop and ask if I was OK. I must have dozed off for a second, anyway, because the cawing of a crow startled me awake.