Our Scenic Biking Tour of the Root River Trail from Lanesboro, MN

Captions: 1. Left, Maria Houser Conzemius somewhere in Lanesboro, Minnesota or environs; right, Jim Conzemius. 2. A peek at the Stone Mill Inn in Lanesboro, where we stayed. Nice place, nice people! 3. The trail beckons us; it's one of my favorite sights. 4. Jim with his bicycle in front of one of our daughter Sarah's "cabinges" (cabins), which she was charmed by as a three- or four-year-old on the Root River Trail. I took photos of every cabin we saw, hoping to find "the one." Not sure we found it. There was one branch we didn't have time to ride, the branch to Houston.

Twenty-six years ago, we brought our two young children with us to the Root River Trail. We camped at the Sylvan Park. Sarah must have been three years old and Jesse, our son, must have been eight or nearly so. Jesse crashed on his little six-speed red Mongoose because we'd bought him an odometer, and he couldn't take his eyes off of it as he stared at his miles per hour as he sped downhill on the trail. True to form, he overfocused on his speed measured by his newly acquired technology and underfocused on where he was going.

We miss our little ones and their curiosity and excitement about new things very much. Our consolation as a couple with grown kids is traveling and making new friends with similarly situated adults along the way. We met Lud and Mary, a pleasant and very interesting couple from Iowa City. They arrived at the Stone Mill Inn before we did and left the day after we did. I mentioned our trip to Peterson and my fascination with the Burdy's Cafe vivid poster of a photographed rattlesnake and a "rattlers in the ledges" talk September 15th that I wanted to go to but couldn't because we planned to leave Minnesota and go back to Iowa City September 13th.

The white-haired villager who talked us into eating at Burdy's told us, "Our rattlesnakes are docile. You can pick them up!" I didn't believe that for a minute, but I admired her sales pitch. I'd heard that people scared away the rattlers basking on the Root River Trail in the sun every morning so as not to scare the tourists. I didn't see a single rattler in 76 miles of riding the trail.

As I told my story about the "docile rattlers" to Lud and Mary, Mary mentioned that Lud is an expert on rattlesnakes. Lud looked as though he wasn't sure he wanted her to bring up his "expertise." Charmed, I wanted to know everything Lud knew about rattlers.

It turns out that Lud, as a youth in West Virginia, engaged in a local pastime of picking up rattlers with a special instrument that protected both the snake and the handler. He and other boys then hurled the rattlers across space into a bag. The boy who threw the most rattlers into the bag won.

An ambulance sat nearby to take anyone unlucky enough to get bit to the hospital for anti-venom treatment and a three-day hospitalization. Lud, a neurologist who specializes in neuro-muscular diseases like ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), said a rattler's bite dissolves (?) your blood platelets, can cause seizures, and generally puts you down hard. Lud said there is even a religion where followers handle rattlers on purpose. If you're bit, there is no treatment in order to sort out the sinners. Sinners die and the rest are saved, not by treatment, mind you, but by their sinless, God-fearing ways.

Lud, Mary, Jim, and I had dinner at the Pedal Pusher Cafe in Lanesboro the night before we left. The company and the food were very good. I was reluctant to leave Lanesboro. Lud and Mary exchanged addresses and phone numbers with us. We plan to have dinner at Maggie's Farm Pizza soon.

I was sorry to leave Lanesboro, MN and the Root River Trail. The scenery was spectacular and the Stone Mill Inn is a rustic but convenient heaven. Fresh baked scones, Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, coffee, and cereal greeted us for breakfast every morning between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. The days we were there were sunny and fair. The trees had rare spots of color but were mostly green.

One cautionary note. The local drivers, pickup trucks, UPS trucks, construction trucks, will mow you down in town on your bicycle and near the treacherous dirt road to the barn roadhouse off of the trail if you're not careful. We noticed the hostility toward tourists a lot more 26 and 20 years ago when our kids were little, but it still exists today, but only in the madcap drivers. At least the people in the tourist industry are nice.

Bob Dorr played a song on Iowa Public Radio sung in 1960 that I would love to own, have all of the lyrics of, or hear again in honor of Lanesboro, MN drivers and the many Iowa City drivers who don't use their turn signals:

"Why Don't You People Learn to Drive," huh? You just might survive, and so on, by Gene Vincent in 1960. I laughed when I heard it. It's a song close to my heart as I try to guess what drivers are going to do next and how fast they're going to do it as I train on Scott Boulevard's hills, occasionally facing the hazardous necessity of crossing the street.