The morning view of the Blue Door Inn.

Alma has character: nice shops with clever displays like this crow with beads.

and these shoe planters….

…and this bench at the Alma Hotel in memory of Henry Schultz.

Back in the homey kitchen at the Blue Door, we enjoyed homemade muffins, fresh orange juice….

and had the roomy table all to ourselves! There were 8 others at the inn, but we got first pick of muffins, which meant rhubarb!

Inn owner Cathy makes a mean quiche.

And we are off! We hope that today, this barn is the only thing falling down.

Today we will wind through numerous small Wisconsin towns along America’s Byway on Highway 35.

And it is bluff country!

On a bike, you cannot overlook the impacts that humans and our machines and fast pace have on nature.

Wisconsin has so much water–beautiful rivers and sloughs. Here we are along the Tiffany Wildlife Area. We are greeted by wafts of scents: elderberries; common milkweed; basswood trees in bloom.

And the water is high!

Here EmJay stops to admire the mighty Chippewa River.

Is it art? A fawn that now rests in peace.

We rolled through Pepin, near the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And past the home of the family that either had lots of kids, or owned a ski shop….?

Happily, many towns have held onto their old depots, like this one in Pepin.

MJ is happy to see that the Pepin Park we enjoyed was funded in part by the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a great federal program funded by offshore oil drilling fees (note, no taxes) to buy conservation land and do park projects like this.

As we cruised out of Pepin, things began to change.

And suddenly we were in Italy at a lovely fountain in a public courtyard!

It was a little surreal! No one was there. Wine tasting starts at 3:00!

In Stockholm, population 66, we stopped at an old stone building.

EmJay visited here back in the 1980s when she lived in St, Paul, Today it is a Swedish gift shop, selling dishtowels for $30. It is expensive to live in a small town!

Little villages like Stockholm draw an artsy crowd. And sometimes, after a big night, the creative juices go wild and the cars get painted!

Approaching yet another bluff…

Maiden Rock, where the story says a young Indian woman protested her arranged marriage by…jumping.

We learned that Lake Pepin is a natural lake, caused when the smaller and steeper flow of the Chippewa River into the Miss created a significant delta.

Ugh…then we had hills! Here MJ tops one of the big ones. Highway 35 meanders away from the river a few places, and that means hills.

The beautiful indigo bunting, whose “sweet, sweet, chew chew chew” happy calls have made us feel good all along our ride.

Our last Wisconsin town, Prescott!

We visited the very nice Great River Visitor’s Center, with fun art!

And then, we began the worst part of our trip to date, along Highways 61 and 10 through Hastings, MN.

This is part of the Mississippi River Trail, a biking trail from Itasca, the source, to New Orleans, the mouth!