Due to waiting for parts for my bike and exceptionally cooler weekends the first half of October, I wasn’t able to pre-plan my annual Fall Color Ride with my friends from the Club this year, but Mother Nature handed us some beautiful weather for this weekend. So, I planned a ride to Holy Hill for today with them and a few others. Instead of choosing the Northern Kettle Moraine, I figured we’d need to head further south for some closer to peak colors.
We met up at the club with a request for kickstands up at 10:30 because Kevin would have to drop off shortly after lunch in Hartford to go sit in the woods and wait for a deer.
One of the attendees who has never been to the Club had a hard time finding it, so Kevin and set out ahead of the group with hopes to speed up our seating at the Mineshaft since we had 11. However, on our way there I remembered from past experience with Kevin’s riding group, they will not seat you or reserve a table until the whole group is there. It shouldn’t have mattered too much though because we ran into the last attendee on our way out only a couple blocks from the Club, so they shouldn’t have been too far behind us.
They arrived around 15 minutes after us, although it still took a while to be seated the food came out really quick. When the group arrived we were told one of our attendees had already dropped off before Lomira, but we sent her a text to be sure.
After lunch Kevin also dropped off to go hunting.
We took 83 to 167 and stopped at the intersection of Drumlin and 167 to get my favorite shot of Holy Hill from the other side of the highway. Luckily there was a communications pedestal there for me to climb up on because there was still corn un-harvested in the field this year, which made it hard for a shorty like me to get a good shot.
From there we continued on Drumlin, to K, to Shamrock with one more stop to take a photo of Holy Hill with my good camera. Then Emerald back to K and when we turned onto Q we lost Dennis as he kept going straight. Russ went to look for him and we waited around half an hour, but knew he might drop off because his left eye was bothering him. He did call later and informed me that was the case. Then to Monchos Rd, and I was going to take Freiss Lake Rd to Hogsback, but realized when I was at Emerald again, I must have missed it. Bummer, as I always like to take Hogsback. We still ended up exactly where I was intending for us to go… Donegal with a planned ride on Carmel Rd to see how busy Holy Hill was, and as I suspected, it was packed and no fun doing rolling stops and starts up the hill to the stop sign. By this time I think all of our bikes were starting to overheat, including myself. That was when I made the executive decision not to park and to just get the heck out of there.
Once we got out onto 167 and to K there was a huge line of Jeeps pulled over on K and they took off right before us. I was going to take E Waterford to Kettle Moraine Dr, but they turned that way. So, instead I went further north to E to get to Kettle Moraine Dr and we beat them. We then made a pit stop at the Pike’s Peak Park visitors center before continuing on Kettle Moraine north to Hillside Rd into Slinger and then 144 to West Bend where we stopped at the Taco Bell for ice-cream at Culver’s. My bonehead mistake as I wasn’t paying attention when I pulled in and thought we were in the Culver’s parking lot, but it was next door. Had some of the group confused thinking that I might be hungry again. Hah!
From there we took 45 back to town and although I swear I wasn’t speeding, I lost the group around Wacousta. Oh well, seemed like a day for riders dropping off, or in this case, taking off. I’m sure everyone knew how to get home from there. Oh, I forgot to check my mileage as I never turned on my tracking/mapping app. (I checked it on my next ride and we put in around 120 miles.)
Anyway, it was a super fun day with a super fun bunch, and I even met a couple new folks. Besides a possible ride tomorrow, I’m certain this weekend will be the last hurrah for riding this year.
