Kevin and I had planned on riding today, but I did not post anything to the FB group because I still wasn’t sure if my issues with my bike may still persist. After finding out from my cousin, my mechanic, that he had recently replaced the fuel filter, I was pretty much chalking it up to bad gas from when I fueled up in Sparta right before it happened for the fist time last weekend. With that said, I had put some octane in the tank on Friday evening and ran it through the engine for a while, with hopes that would help too even though there shouldn’t have been much of any of that gas remaining.
So, Kevin met me at my place around 9:30. I hadn’t taken the time to plan a route, but was interested in at least stopping at Carol’s Cones in Pardeeville at some point because they had advertised Christmas in July with peppermint flavored ice cream. I also had seen on the news this morning that the Kewanee 4H came up with a new flavor for Cedar Crest, Cow Lick which looked pretty yummy too!
Well, before we made it to Rosendale, my bike did the same exact loss of engine power briefly and twice in a row, but it never did it again after that. Since that was the case, I decided to take as many back roads as possible and got off of Hwy 23 on Brandon Road, just before Ripon, heading south. Eventually we were pretty close to Fox Lake and we decided to stop for lunch at Karen’s Hip Hop Diner, who also has Cedar Crest ice cream. Although, we weren’t going to be ready for ice cream, I asked our waitress if she had heard of the Cow Lick flavor, but she had not.
From there we took some back roads we had never been on before eventually taking Hwy 73 into Columbus to gas up, and then Hwy 89 south for a wile before venturing on more back roads and then Hwy 19 into Sun Prairie and then back roads north and west from there. Eventually making it to De Forest and just outside of Dane I happened to notice an old train bridge east of Hwy 113. So we ventured over to check it out and it was built in 1896. Pretty cool!
And, low and behold, we ended up in Rio the same road I took into it on Monday on my way back from MN, but this time I took Hwy 16 for a ways before heading over towards Pardeeville on Hwy 22 north.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see Carol’s also had the Cow Lick flavor, so I opted for a scoop of both the peppermint and that. Something I never usually do; mix flavors. However, I just had to try both, and they were super yummy!
From there we decided to take Hwy 44 north all the way to Brandon and you most certainly could tell it was a Sunday and Amish Country. We passed around 15 buggies over a very long stretch of Hwy 44. We even caught a few of them racing each other or just lapping each other. Pretty neat and funny at the same time, and they are always so friendly by waving at us as we passed, or giving us the peace sign.
It ended up being a bit longer of a ride than we anticipated and also a bit longer of a day of riding too. However, it felt so good and was such a beautiful day for it!
