It may have fallen short of paradise, but it wasn't quite the bike ride from hell, either

    Heading out for the first long bike ride of the year, I drove north past West Bend and on to Kewaskum. 
    I needed someplace that was less than an hour away where I could find some nice rural scenery and use a rails-to-trails bikeway, which Wisconsin has in such abundance.  And I had found the answer in the State Department of Tourism’s Wisconsin Biking Guide, which listed the Eisenbahn State Trail, 24.6 miles one way, which is available online at www.travelwisconsin.com. 
    The portion of the trail from West Bend to Kewaskum parallels Highway 45, and I wanted some scenery to go with my exercise.  I chose to get on at Kewaskum and ride the 6.6 miles to Campbellsport, and maybe go the next 7.6 miles to Eden if I felt like it.
    Kewaskum has a great parking lot just east of the Highways 45 and 28 intersection, on the north side of Highway 28.  I looked around for instructions on getting a trail pass, because the guide said a state trail pass was required, but I couldn’t find any place to get one. Since the Kewaskum Police Department is right across from the lot, I went over to inquire.  The officer on duty told me I didn’t need one, that it was a free trail, and that was good enough for me. 
    I headed out just before noon, thinking I could probably average 10 miles per hour and do the trail all the way to Eden and back in about three hours. What foolishness.
    The trail has a nice crushed limestone surface, and my July 3 ride was on a great day with temperatures in the 70s and the sun in and out of the partly cloudy skies.  Between Kewaskum and Campbellsport, the American dream of owning a little place in the country is in evidence everywhere, with scattered subdivisions and new houses and mcmansions, some of them with the owners diligently tending their garden plots.      
    After that you get into more countryside with real farms with people cutting hay and cows grazing.  Both sections were very pleasant, just what I had hoped for.  
    At Campbellsport, I stopped briefly for a drink and to take a few photos, then decided I was still feeling plenty good enough to tackle at least part of the trail to Eden.  One little drawback was there were no mile markers and I didn’t know how far I’d come and how far I had left to go.  I just kept moving by telling myself that Eden had to be just around the next bend or just over the next little hill.    
    
    I finally got there about 2, tired and dragging a little, in need of a snack to keep me going so I could get back to Kewaskum on my bike and not in an ambulance. But there was no store or anything in sight, just another subdivision and a park, so I turned back and started pedaling south.  It seemed like most of the trip to Eden had been on a slight uphill grade, and strangely it seemed that most of on the way back was an uphill grade.
      Toward the end of the route back to Campbellsport, I was so tired I got off the bike and walked a few hundred yards. The scenery was still great, and two sandhill cranes that I had seen earlier in a cornfield were still there, working the field (photo at left).
    I was able to drag myself into Campbellsport, with the thought that “This would have been the ideal place to turn around and head back.  You’d have a little over 13 miles and two hours on your first big bike ride of the season, and that would be enough.”  But that was no help to me at this point. 
     What was a help was the gas station where I bought a 20-ounce Gatorade, a liter bottle of water and a Snickers almond bar.  I downed the Gatorade as I sat in the shade on the ground on the north side of the gas station, had some of the water and used the rest to refill my now empty water bottle.  
    Refreshed does not describe how I felt, but maybe just ready to carry on.  The last 6.6 miles were a struggle, but with a couple of breaks I made it back into Kewaskum about 4, not having needed the candy bar to get me through.  If I’d done a little more conditioning beforehand, it would have been a perfect ride, and that was my fault, not the fault of the trail.  I want to go back again sometime--when I’m in better shape, of course.