Mauston to Sauk City - day 3

We biked 65 miles today with very little wind. High of 75 degrees with beautiful blue sky with a few clouds.

We woke up and packed up the bike and went to breakfast. We started biking at 7:10AM this morning and knew that we were in for a lot of hills and beautiful scenery. The weather was sunny (not a cloud in the sky) and very little wind.

Words from John - Being new to this touring we don't know how to rate or describe our riding conditions so what we decided is that we will only count hills that we need to use the small ring on. We left Mauston and hit our first big hill three miles into our ride. I don't mind saying that it was a walker - if that offends any hammerheads they can "bite me". Today's ride is one that fellow bikers definitely want to put on there list of rides to do, Mauston to Reedsburg via county K and Reedsburg to Sauk City, WI via golf course road county D and county PF. Beautiful scenery, plenty of hills, good roads, and little traffic.

An hour and half into the ride we topped a hill and started coasting down. All I could say was "WOW,WOW, WOW". We were just in awe of the scenery and I looked at the speedometer and said "WHOA - we were going 45 miles an hour without knowing it - Kathi put the drag brake on".

So between Mauston and Reedsburg we had 7 serious hills - 3 of which we walked. From Reedsburg to Sauk City we had 11 serious hills - 4 of which we walked. Our reasoning behind the walking is to save ourselves for another day being well past our prime we don't want to burn ourselves out the first week of our adventure.

Half way between Reedsburg and Sauk City I heard a "tink" and immediately knew that didn't sound good. Sure enough we broke a chain so we pulled onto the side of the road and managed to repair the chain in about 15 minutes.

We arrived at Sauk City around 1:30PM and stopped at Subway to get a bite to eat and headed to the Library. We spent some time biking around the town - there is a bike path that goes along the Wisconsin River so we biked that and then spent some time just sitting on a bench and enjoying the day.

Tonight we are at the Skyview motel which is 2-1/2 miles out of Sauk City. Tomorrow we will head to Middleton to meet up with my sister and her husband and spend the afternoon and evening with them.

I am sure we will sleep well tonight!

Happy Trails!

Total mileage as of today is 185 miles