I took advantage of a moms-and-kids playdate today to take a long, fun, and tiring bike ride on gravel roads east and south of Northfield. I didn’t have enough time to make it all the way to Kenyon, but I did enjoy a steady ride through a countryside that’s looking increasingly, beautifully bleak. I detoured off my route to visit the well-known Vang Lutheran Church (slides two and three in this slideshow), a classic Norwegian-American church in that it’s roughly five miles past the middle of nowhere. Those old Norwegians liked their churches white and far, far away.
Elsewhere, I saw acres and acres of cornfields in various conditions (standing, harvested, plowed under), several flocks of sheep, plenty of horses and cows, dozens of farms, and of course miles and miles of wonderful rolling roads. The roads were all substantially less rutted but more gravelly than they had been the last time I took this ride, in September. I’d guess that the county dumped more gravel on the roads and graded them in preparation for the winter. If so, I’m sorry to have carried a few pounds of that gravel back to Northfield in my tires, tights, and pack.