Featured Bicycle Touring Route: Devil's Lake State Park

by Peter Herreid

Devil’s Lake is one of the most popular state parks in Wisconsin and a great weekend camping destination for biking out of Madison. So, it is surprising not to see more people pulling up to campsites on bikes. The park is located about 42 miles northwest of Madison or roughly five hours on a fully loaded bike. The route is hilly, but the destination rewarding.

Featured Bicycle Touring Route: Blue Mound State Park

Military Ridge State Trail

Bike camping at Blue Mound State Park is a good introduction to an overnight bike tour. The 30-mile trail route from Capitol Square will take you straight to the park’s bike-in campground.  

Sugar River

The Southwest Commuter Path leads out of Madison towards the start of the Military Ridge State Trail. Out of Verona, this rail trail runs through the Sugar River Bottoms’ wetlands and prairies. After the trail parts ways with the Sugar River, it ascends for miles at a slight, yet tiring uphill grade to Mt. Horeb. (The flipside of the ascent is a fast downhill stretch on the way home.) 

In Mt. Horeb, there’s water and bathrooms at the restored train depot along the path and a handful of places to get food and a beer in town. Schubert’s Diner on Main Street is a nice place for breakfast and coffee. There is also a convenience store in the Village of Blue Mounds just off the trail for any items you want to pick up just before the park.  

My friend made the trip on her single speed.

The bike campground is surprisingly underutilized. Although it’s a bit more rustic than campgrounds that accommodate RVs, it still has running water and two well-maintained latrines. In addition to standard, non-electric tent sites, there’s also an open-air structure with wooden cots – on a recent trip with friends we opted not to pitch the tent and instead slept in the cool, mosquito-free air. 

No tent required.

From the park’s observation tower (the highest point in southern Wisconsin), you can look back over the distance biked and see Madison as specks on the horizon. The park doesn’t have a lake, but does have a pool with diving board.

Taking a yoga break on the return trip.

Wild asparagus along the Capital City Trail

Talked into Touring

by Peter Herreid

One night back in ’09, we were sitting around a campfire at Picnic Point and a friend suggested we bike out to Blue Mound State Park and camp overnight. He wasn’t getting any takers from us. Sure, we had made a few trips out of Madison on our classic Schwinn 3-speeds, but never as far as the Dane County border. A trip past the county line seemed epic, but loaded down with camping gear, a foolish undertaking. 

Fully Loaded with Thoughts on Touring

Beginning June 11^th, we will be rolling out a series of posts on touring, featuring bike camping destinations near Madison. Subscribe to this blog or follow mad_bike_life on Twitter to make sure not to miss the series. Till then, keep on trucking! 

Portland's Transformation

by Peter Herreid

Portland wasn’t born a bicycle-friendly city; it had to earn its platinum rating from the League of American Bicyclists. A variety of actions dating back to the 1970s laid the groundwork for advocates to transform Portland into a bicycle-friendly city in the 1990s and 2000s. In the 1970s, Portland chose to remove the Harbor Drive freeway along the west bank of the Willamette and create the much more inviting Waterfront Park. Portland also chose to redirect funds from the creation of a freeway that would have run through the southeast section of the city towards investment in light rail. An urban growth boundary was adopted in order to contain urban sprawl and focus growth inward onto Portland’s traditional street grid, leading to a more compact and bikeable urban area. 

Filmed by Bike

If you were to trace the lines of art and cycling culture to where they intersect, you would find yourself at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland for Filmed by Bike, a festival of bike-themed, short films. This year’s 10^th anniversary festival included a variety of genres, such as music videos, documentaries, animations, and comedies.

Bicycle Rights! Portlandia Clip

When mentioning our Portland trip to co-workers and friends, the most common reaction has been, “Have you seen that show Portlandia?” Of course, I had seen the viral “Bicycle Rights” Portlandia clip. Someone obnoxiously taking himself too seriously makes for good comedic material and serves as a reminder to not be that guy.

What adds to the clip is that Portland seems to have long ago gotten the “bicycle rights” message. It shows in the political and media attention to the rights of bicyclists, the investment in bikeways, and the acceptance of bicycles by Portland’s motorists, demonstrated by a greater willingness to share the road.

For the record, birds in Portland do not ride little bikes.

Portland’s Three-Mile Downtown Bike Path Loop

by Peter Herreid

If you want to take a nice little bike ride in the heart of Portland, hit some highlights with the Steel Bridge - Hawthorne Bridge loop. Because it follows the banks of the Willamette, you can’t get lost, which is kind of nice if you are new to town. The loop also includes Portland landmarks, such as the floating section of the Eastbank Esplanade. Of course, you can always figure out how to best extend the loop with the city’s Portland by Bicycle map. 

Mountain Bike? Yes!

Forest Park, Portland

 It's a bike that I rode on a mountain. Enough said.

St. Johns Bridge – Portland, How About A Warning?

by Peter Herreid

During our stay in Portland, one day we had biked a nice tour of the NE bike boulevards, or “neighborhood greenways” as they are referred to locally, and wanted to cross the Willamette River to get to Forest Park. The Portland Bureau of Transportation’s bike map, which had till then faithfully served us, showed St. Johns Bridge as having a “multi-use path closed to motor vehicles.” Fortunate for us we thought, because it was the only bridge up and down the river for miles, so off we went. 

Approaching the bridge, the sidewalk didn’t exactly look like a multi-use path, but the road looked too dangerous to bike, so we stuck to the sidewalk. Now, you should know that heights make me nervous. I wasn’t sitting upright on my rented Dutch bike anymore. I was tucked low, nearly into a road cyclist’s racing position. 

 

Before the first tower, I was walking it up the sidewalk. Although the railing was high enough above my waist that it would take a conscious decision to jump over, it was not reassuringly high above my waist. Looking down to my right, through the bars of the bridge railing I could see warehouses, docks, and boats on the Willamette, all toy-like in the distance, yet all too real. To my left I couldn’t see much, but could feel the swoosh of each passing truck and then the heavy mist of rain droplets and road wash left in its wake. I couldn’t tell if or how far the passenger side mirrors were hanging over the sidewalk, but imagined them as baseball bats swinging through the air, just feet from my head.