The MRT uses highway 61 as the main route but occasionally veers off into the countryside on quiet roads through rolling sand dunes. At one point I see on the road ahead of me a strange box on wheels with a pair of "hooves" moving below. It looks like an Amish wagon except instead of black it is pink. I eventually overtake to learn it is a guy pulling a contraption like a cart and the box is pink foam board presumably his sleeping compartment. It is festooned with flags and plastic flowers, faded stuffed animals and slogans. The guy is about my age but built like Hercules and brown as a chestnut. He is shirtless despite the hordes of mosquitoes that beset me when I slow down to talk to him. He is a Vietnam vet and activist on his way to Washington D.C. and has been on the road for 16 months! He tells me he has been stopped by the police more than 200 times but mostly out of curiosity. He also tells me he is constantly asked to be interviewed by local news media as he passes through and seems annoyed although it would seem that is the point of the whole thing. I asked if he will meet with any politicians in D.C.. He said no but will meet with other activist groups that are based there. I bid him good luck leave him behind to escape the mosquitos. In Wabasha I stopped to get a broken spoke replaced at the Two rivers bike shop. It had already developed a annoying wobble. The owner was very accommodating dropping every thing to get me on the road. He even trued the wheel and tightened other loose spokes "those will break too" to make me better than whole.
I arrive in Minneiska, a little river town that happens to be where my mom lived until she was 18. It is also near deer hunting land my brother Scott and I own down the road a couple miles, I make camp at the DNR boat landing as darkness falls.
The Thorpe Wildlife Management Area is across the highway from our hunting land along highway 61. It is named after my Grandfather Clarence Thorpe who provided the land to the State of Minnesota.
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