We boogied out of New Ulm -- literally. The wind had finally shifted, and Ro told me that we'd been doing 17-20 mph for the first 15 miles out of town!
We rode through Cortland, and on into Mankato, crossing the Minnesota River from North Mankato. It's a truly nice town! We met a a few of kids, one with a parrot-type bird at the Pit 2 park, who had come out with their mom to say hi. We asked a couple of locals (part of a local university news crew?) for a good place to eat, and they mentioned the Bagel Brothers, on Cherry Street (the main downtown street, as opposed to the retail strip further up the route that we were being directed towards). Boy was it good! Heidi (duck heidi, from SF) joined us, and as it turned out the Gilligan's Island singers (they have squeaky duck heads on their bikes) were there too. We told them that we hadn't managed to find a bagel place since we left LA.
We continued on, after I took a picture of the Blue Earth County Courthouse (at least I think that's what it was). After this the day got even hotter, well into the 90s, so I started taking fewer pictures. This happens. However, I did get pictures of the town signs for Janesville and Waseca, the Pit 3 and almost-to-camp towns.
We got into Owatonna amazingly early for us; 3:13. Stunned and amazed, we almost didn't know what to do with ourselves, but we knew we had a long day tomorrow so we didn't do much! The announcements that night were really cool; they had Miss Minnesota come out and sing for us! The mosquitos were once again annoying, but that's become a usual thing. *sigh*. We got to bed early, and crashed!
