About 4am I woke up to the sound of a gentle rain falling on the rain cover of my tent. I went back to sleep and when the sun came up the rain had stopped and it was nice and cool outside. I had breakfast, got packed up, and got on the road. Before leaving I used Google maps to chart my a course to Lake City. Since I am avoiding freeways, and there is no direct route there, I am being directed through farmland on county roads with lots of left and right turns. It’s a good way to break up the ride.
I turned on some music and the voice directions from the map came on every once in a while telling me which way to go.
It is beautiful scenery and the crops of corn and soybeans are lush. I went through many small communities and the one that stood out was Henderson. It was like a movie set of small town America and felt immediately homey. The one larger city I skirted was Northfield. While home to some colleges, what I saw was the massive Malt-O-Meal factory which I could smell before I rounded the corner and saw it.
As I got closer to Lake City I changed directions so many time I wasn’t sure I was even going the right way but before I knew it I turned into a newer neighborhood and pulled into my friend’s driveway. Steve Gardiner and I have know each other for quite a long time and had many fun times together. We taught together at Billings Senior High School, ate hundreds of lunchs together, did our master degrees and National Board Certifications together, and ran numerous races together. He invited me to be his assistant cross country coach which I accepted and did for 10 years until I retired. After he retired a few years ago, he moved to Lake City and while we have kept in close contact we hadn’t seen each other since he’d left.
With his wife, Peggy, we sat around and did some catching up before heading out and getting a tour of the town. It sits on Lake Peppin, about a mile across and 3 miles long which is actually a wide portion of the Mississippi River. The town has definitely made the most of its location with numerous paths along the shoreline and a fresh water nautical feel to everything. We stopped at a nearby state park and took a short hike through the woods to the shoreline and then out to the end of a sandy point. The weather was perfect with a light breeze.
The highlight came when we went to the marina and took his pontoon boat out for a tour of the lake. THAT was lots of fun.
We wound the excursion up with a great meal at a Mexican place downtown and finished the evening chatting on his deck while watching shooting stars. A great day.
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