Today’s ride was really short, about 13 miles. We rode from Columbus, Wisconsin to the Trek plant in Waterloo. The weather was great so that makes 5 greats days in a row!
We got a great tour of the Trek Bicycle factory. We saw the race room where they get the pro bikes ready and the carbon fiber layup room, and they fed us a great lunch before we left for home. What a great trip this was, there was no one along who was difficult. Ann and Katie were great organizers, Steve did a fine job with the route, Dave Clabby from Overland Tours was incredible.
When Kathy first asked me if I would go along on this ride I was thinking I would do it because she really wanted me to. BUT the truth is this was great time spent with some great people!
The vans load with Bicycles to bring us back to Owatonna
Getting ready for the 74 mile ride from Mauston to Columbus Wisconsin
Day 4 took us from Mauston, Wisconsin to Columbus (about 13 miles from the Trek Plant). Again, the weather was fantastic, and the route was great. Steve did an exceptional job of route planning for this trip and he was great about being flexible when new possibilities emerged. Kathy and I pretty much have our confidence back, everywhere except gravel covered corners (I think that will take a while). We decided to stop in Wisconsin Dells and ride a couple of rides. Dave from Overland Touring is really great, he got to Timber Falls in the Dells before us, convinced them to open 2 hours early for us, and negotiated a half price deal to boot. I cannot say enough about Dave and the Overland Touring Company. He provided the logistics that made a trip with this many riders really work. He found nice places usually in the shade for us to have lunch, was always available, flexible, and did all of the things that allowed us to have a really great time not worrying so much about logistics.
In the afternoon, Tom looked at the maps (like usual) and found an alternate route that would take us away from traffic, and so we went from Portage to Columbus on some really sweet back roads!
Day Three was a great day (Actually, about as good as the two before it, but there were several memorable moments). First we gathered in the parking lot got on our bike and our route master, Steve Deetz, promptly suggested that we turn around and leave the parking lot from the other end. Pretty much everyone followed this good advice except the two tandems (that is, Kathy and me and Tom and Pat). Tandems are pretty hard to turn around and Tom is a good navigator so we left the group and followed Tom’s unique route to the east. It was a pretty good way to go too because when we did see the rest of the group again 5-6 miles later, they were behind us.
A few of us planned to ride the Elroy-Sparta Trail to Sparta and the rest took the paralleling paved roads. It became a race when Pat looked off to the north and saw the road riders paralleling us on the road. A little later when the road crossed the trail, they flew in front of us. A little after that we crossed the road right in front of them. By this time Tom had taken the pace up a couple of notches. We wanted to get to Sparta first! We were the locomotives and they were the Conestogas. Well in the end we got there about the same time, but the locomotives probably need to concede see as how we took two wrong turns in Sparta.
Later in the ride Kathy and I had a pretty scary flat. I think the front tire must have been loosing air because it was starting to vibrate. Anyway, when we went into a gravelly corner at about 18 mph, the tire blew and it was a struggle to keep the bike under control. I happened to have the camera running on the front fork, here is the video:
Adrienne, about to throw a bale at the Hustler Fest hay bale toss
The happy winner of the 3rd place award was from our group
Part of the group decided to stop at a bar, and while there, they saw the flyer for the Hustler festival that was going on in Hustler. They decided to check out the chicken throwing contest on the way through, but when they got there, the hay bale throwing contest was on instead. Adrienne ended up getting third place, a yellow ribbon, $2, and her picture taken for the local paper. Pretty good for someone who claims to never have touched hay who probably has allergies to such things.
Linnea changing a flat tire by herself in the company of 8 male supervisors.
Day 2 took us from Rochester Minnesota to La Crosse Wisconsin. It was another great day, a little more wind, and about twice as many miles. The wind was from the south so it was mostly a crosswind and did not effect the ride much. The 80 miles went by quickly as we went from the rolling terrain east of Rochester and ended in a nice decent into La Cresent then across the Mississippi to La Crosse,
According to Adrienne Boese, the day included a lot of off road riding, swimming, and a strong head wind. I am thinking this assessment stemmed from the stop she made at the bar in Utica. Linnea, Shirley Steve and Jonathon enjoyed drafting behind a tractor. Kathy didn’t like the wind, she thought it was a little too hot, but she did like the nice winding decent into La Cresent. I am not sure if she like my company sitting right in front of her on the tandem or not
A few mile from the finish, Linnea had a flat tire. It was one of those gun shot sort of flats where you could probably hear it 100 yards away and you wondered if you should take cover She was pretty pleased as she changed it all by herself while 8 men pretty much stood and watched her You Go Girl!
The plans for this ride have been so long in the making that it seems a little odd that today we are finally on the ride. The bike group in Owatonna is pretty active. In large part that is because of the good support the biking community in town gets from Ann and Katie the owners of Straight River Sports and Fitness. For a town of about 20,000 we have regularly have 10 to 20 riders (sometimes more) on the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning rides and the women’s ride on Wednesday nights often has another 10.
So, it is really not all that surprising that the 28 spots for the ride filled up quickly with a waiting list for the 280 mile ride from Owatonna to the Trek factory in Waterloo, Wisconsin. The thing about this sort of ride is that most of us know each other pretty well and we are all from the same small town so it is a little different from the large group rides that I sometimes participate in. Katie and Ann arranged for Overland Touring Company to run the sag and shuttle our gear (and us back from Waterloo).
The first leg of the journey was pretty short. We made it about 50 yards then waited for the 1st flat tire to get repaired.
The first leg was today from Owatonna to Rochester, about 45 miles.We started at about 3:30. And after an inaugural flat tire in the parking lot we got off to a good start with a slight tail wind. The group has a pretty wide range of biking abilities, from racers to casual riders. The lead riders were in with an average speed of a little better than 20 mph, and the last rider made it into Rochester in a little under 4 hours. Kathy and I on our tandem were able to stay with the lead riders for most of the ride. When we got to Rochester, the trailer with your luggage and a cooler full of cold drinks was waiting. I am really liking the Overland Touring Company already
We could not have asked for a better day! The weather was warm. The wind was calm. No one crashed. And only 1 flat tire (that I know of)
We left early and headed down the rough road from Monteverde to make our way back towards Alajuela. We left at 5:30, but I was reminded that the last time we left even earlier watching a full moon over the Pacific the whole way. This year we saw a few turquoise-browed motmot birds– they are quite a sight! Very colorful with split tail feathers. We made it back to the Transamerican Highway in a little more than an hour and then headed back to Alajuela.
Kathy and Scott and the Poas overlook, looking at fog
We drove up to the summit of the volcano Poas, which is about 40 km up from Alajuela. Just like last year, they said the it was foggy (it was) but unlike the last time we were here we went in anyway. (Last year our friend Alonzo told us that they always say that at the entrance, especially to tourists, since sometimes people ask for their money back). It was pretty funny at the volcano’s crater that many, many people standing at the observation point staring into the fog and we were with them! The hike at the summit was great and it was nice chance to get out and take a little walk.
We drove back down the mountain into Alajuela to meet up with our hostel host, Alonso. It’s always a challenging navigating in Alajuela as there are no street names, lots of traffic, and one ways. We made it to his house and he told us that he forgot that we were coming. The good news was that his brother Eduardo just opened a new hotel 2 months ago and we could stay there for the same rate as staying with Alonso. We took the Fortuner to the car wash and then headed to the northern part of Alajuela to Hotel Villa Bonita. What can we say other than WOW! This place is incredible. It’s up in the hills with a great view of the city, it’s quiet, and it’s the fanciest place we’ve stayed the entire trip. What a great way to end our trip.
The Duffus family birders at the cloud forest reserve in Monteverde
Quetzal Number 3
We hired Danilo Brenes to take us into the Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde. Our goal was to see birds and Danilo really delivered the goods! We found 45 species, including a female and male Quetzal and an orange-bellied trogon.Wow, what a morning of birding! Danilo is a fantastic guide and even Grandma who is really not all that much of a birder, had a blast saying he really knew what he was talking about and besides that he was really fun to be with!
This is our last day in Santa Elena and at La Colina. Kathy spent a little time pulling weeds for Nanci the owner. Kathy loves to do garden work and to pull weeds in particular so when we came back from the bird walk with Danilo and Nanci was cutting brush with a machete, Kathy quickly volunteered to help saying that she usually doesn’t get to pull weeds in February.
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Kathy was really excited to do a little gardening in February!
When Ben and I went back up to the Reserve and hiked out around the triangle, Danilo’s value as a bird guide really showed itself. We found maybe 3 more birds during the afternoon hike, all of which we had seen in the morning.
The thing about dung beetles is their silly s**t eating grins
We did see a pair really cool metallic green dung rolling beetles, I am including this image for my friend Joe Griffith–Joe notice how much effort these guys expend pushing around a big ball of poop? (it is all about priorities). The hike was great, it went up the divide between the Pacific and Atlantic drainage and it was very abrupt! Steep on both sides.
Meanwhile, Kathy, Gloria, and Linnea went on a tour of a coffee plantation. They had a good time and came back with a load of coffee to take back, and plenty of information about how coffee is grown and processed.
We again had a great stay at La Colina. We really like this place (we’ve stayed here twice now) and Nanci is a great host, and does a fantastic job. We certainly hope to get back here another time!
These coatimundi's are pretty close cousin to our raccoons both in form and function!
In the morning, we left Linnea at La Colina to give her a well needed break from her family and we headed up into the cloud forest to Selvatura Park to do the canopy tour. We got our helmets and our harnesses, we got our safety talk, and walked up our first platform which really wasn’t all that high and grandma decided that at 76, this wasn’t something she needed to do. So the nice staff at Selvatura brought grandma back to the reception area and gave her a pass to the hummingbird and butterfly exhibits, which she really enjoyed
The cloud forest at Selvatura was clearer than it was when we were there last year. It wasn’t quite as exciting as last year, but it was still a lot of fun. Kathy didn’t scream quite as loud on the Tarzan swing, but everyone enjoyed her performance.
Nanci at La Colina helped us arrange a night hike and we were a little apprehensive about doing a night hike since we did one last year and it was kind of ho-hum. We saw a dead trantula, a North American raccoon, a luminescent click beetle and a couple of sleeping birds… So our expectations were not very high.
Ben spotted this margay on in night hike at Monteverde. This is the primo find of the trip!
We met our guide Danilo Brenesand were joined by a group of Canadians, making a large group of ten. We set out for the hike about 5:30 and we saw a yellow kneed trantula that Danilo lured out of the hole using a stick as he saw someone do on the Discovery Channel. This tarantula was actually alive, so we were already ahead.
one of 3 two-toed sloths we saw on the night hike.
One of the other groups called on the walkie-talkies and had spotted a sloth. We ran to see the sloth, which we saw a great view of as it was moving tree to tree. We headed back into the woods and saw what could have been the find of the trip. Ben saw a couple of glowing orange eyes he thought
was a house cat and it turned out to be a margay… A smaller cat that is rarely seen. Our guide had only seen it one other time in his life (and the last time he had only seen a patch of fur in the under brush).
We also saw a palm pit viper, army and leaf cutter ants, more sloths, coati mundis, luminescent click beetle, and some sleeping birds. All in all, we’d give Danilo and the tour a Duffus family five thumbs up.
The drive to Monteverde in our new Toyota Fortuner was pretty non-eventful. We made it to La Colina Lodge, the place we stayed here the last time we were in Monteverde a little before noon. We decided to take the hike back to San Lucia falls in the afternoon. I forgot how steep and rough the trail was, but my mom hung in there better than I could have imagined and thought the view of the falls was well worth the walk. We really lucked out in terms of wildlife on the hike – we saw both a quetzal and white-faced monkeys. I thought seeing the quetzal was more than worth the walk. It was very close, maybe 20 feet up and 40 feet away. I imagined seeing one in the top of a tree but this one was close and brilliant.
This Quetzal was really putting on a show!
White-Faced Monkey
On the way back, we encountered a group of white-faced monkeys. They are a lot more active than howlers and it was tricky getting a photo through all of the foliage but eventually curiosity must have gotten the best of a few of them because they started to find places where they could look at us!
Monteverde is always surprising in terms of the climate. You drive up through fairly dry forest and you arrive in a lush, green, and much cooler climate once you reach the top. It cools off even more once the clouds roll in, so now we aren’t feeling so foolish for packing pants and long sleeves. It’s a nice transition from the 90 degree plus temps of the Osa Peninsula and the central Pacific coast.
Tuesday was mostly a travel day. That always has been a little excitement/consternation involved when we do not have a place arrange to stay. We decided that the drive from the Osa Peninsula in the south to Monteverde in the central highlands was going to make for too long of a day, so we decided to find a place somewhere in between. The problem was we knew that places that would be mid-way—Manuel Antonio, Quepos, Jaco, etc. are big surf/beach locations and as much as I am interested in Stand Up Paddle boarding, surfing communities are pretty foreign places to me. After I took everyone up to the top of a mountain to a hotel that I thought might be good (even though Linnea said it was going to be expensive!), after driving by hundreds or so Grecian urns planted we decided that the place was not going to be to our liking and certainly would have been too expensive. We soon discovered in our guidebooks that the place was listed as “very expensive” with themed rooms and live classical music. Not for us! We drove through Tarcoles, and were in the process of getting a bit frustrated when we saw a sign to Hotel Villa Lapas, which turned out to be a nice place to stay… it even had air conditioning… what a luxury! On our way to dinner, we discovered our Toyota Fortuner had a very flat tire and had to put on the spare, since all the tire shops had already closed. We had a great casados (rice, black beans, fried plantains, salad, and fish) at a Tico-restaurant on the ocean.
On Wednesday morning, we checked to see if our tire could be fixed, but no luck! We needed to get a new tire from the car rental later in the day. So, we hired a guide to take us through a portion of Carara National Park. It was a very off the trail hike through what looked to me like fantastic snake habitat. In fact our guide Antonio would say, “Stay here and don’t move around” when he would go off trying to spot a bird. We saw an adult and a fledging spectacled owl, a black-throated trogon, boat-billed herons, and the backside of a sloth and few other birds, but one of the really enjoyable parts of this hike was getting off of the trail.
Black Throated Trogon
Spectacled Owl
Boat-billed heron
On the way back we stopped by the Tarcoles River and saw a huge congregation of American Crocodiles. From the bridge we could count at least 25 and some of them were huge. I was thinking that this certainly would not be a good place to go swimming after dark!
After a great lunch at a soda, Ben and I then drove down to Jaco to stop by the Alamo rental to see what they could do about the tire situation. They told us that they’d order us a new tire and we’d have to pick it up Thursday morning. We were thankful that the tire was covered under the car insurance and we didn’t have to buy a brand new one!! When we got there on Thursday morning we found out that they could not get us a tire so they gave us a new car instead ☺ I have never before been given a new car on account of a flat tire!
