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| From left: Andy, Anton, Myself, Dan, Arthur. |
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We left from the infamous Ben's Cycle alley way about 6:30pm last Friday evening and rode to our destination stop,
Lampham peak, while chasing the sunset on the
New Berlin trail. It took us around 2.5hrs to our camp site with a couple pit stops along the way, which one was at
Le Duc's Frozen Custard.
Our campsite was superb with plenty of area to pop up multiply tents and two trees ideal for my hammock in the clearing.
Dan had the heaviest bike when we left the shop out of the 5 of us, but when we loaded two bundles of fire wood in his rear pannier bags and a twelver on his front rack, he tipped the scale for sure. My surly Junk strap came in handy when securing our beverages to the his rack. Thank you Dan for hauling like a pro up to the peak!
Picture to the right showing the preferred spicy brown sauce for the night. I can say only one of us was bold enough to wake up and relive it's qualities the next morning.
The four of us weren't willing to tough it out and wake up at sunrise like our friend Arthur, who had a hot date in Madison the next day, so we left the park short a man.
Anton is happy as a lark while cruising through Lake mills.
We stopped at one of the trail headquarters, which was converted from an old railroad station, for a water and peanut M&M break. We stopped in briefly, but mostly stayed in the shade outside.
We passed through a hand full of tunnels that were about 20-30 yards long. Overall trail conditions for great, they weren't too dry or too wet.
We were greeted with this nice message when reached the end of the trail just outside Madison.
I had by far the least amount of gear and had the lightest setup out of the group. I'm running an Shimano Alfine 8sp with a 42/18t drive train. I used a Revelate Designs
Viscacha saddle bag and an Outdoor Research horizontal dry bag rigged to my handlebars. Both systems worked wonderfully and I am completely happy with them and how they performed. I admit using a hammock over a tent made using only these two bags possible, but I'm really looking forward to running this same setup in the coming weeks.
We see our first signs of the capital in the distance.
We made it! Beer and popcorn await us!
The director, Mike Dion, and the soundtrack artist, Dominique Fraissard, spoke prior to the film and gave a some insite
Earl directed us to a much needed fuel filled breakfast at Lazy Jane's in Madison Sunday morning. Super good!
Most of the next morning I followed the smell of Italian cheese.
We saw a fair amount of Wisconsin wildlife. Beavers, great blue herons, Peregrine Falcon, Hawks, and a white tailed doe on the New Berlin trail 25 yards in front of us!
The obvious last check point before we all retreat back home to our lady friends, who had dinner waiting for us btw, was Frank's Power Plant for tall boys and muscle relaxers.
