Unseasonally warm temperatures way up here in Northern Wisconsin have me itching to ride the beach again. It has been 80° F this week, and the forecast is for more of the same next week. That is about 20 degrees warmer than our normal average high temperature for this time of the year. As you can see by the graphs below, the water levels of the Great Lakes have varied considerably over the last 100 years, and there doesn’t appear to be a pattern that I can discern.
You can see that the current water level for Lake Michigan is about what it was in 2015
The Hungry Bear gravel race is this weekend, and in the past, when I ran the event, I was more concerned about snow still covering some of the forest roads than people getting dehydrated. The warm winters of the last several years have reduced ice cover on the Great Lakes, which tends to lower water levels. The upside of that is wide, longer beaches, perfect for fat bike rides.
Who needs a PFD when you ride a fat bike?
Up in my current neck of the Northwoods, we have the south shore of Lake Superior beaches to ride. I have ridden Wisconsin Point and Minnesota Point sand spits by Superior, WI and Duluth, MN. Those are some of the longest freshwater sandbars in the world.
Some of the beach at Wisconsin Point in the photos above
For sandy rides, I also have my trip planned to re-ride the Valhalla Beach Party route that I mentioned in last week’s Wallpaper Wednesday post. I had to postpone that trip until next week because the Herster Campground on the shore of Lake Superior is still closed this week. The Herbster Campground has a dozen amazing tent sites right on the beach on Lake Superior.
If some of you readers are having fat fun on sand, send me some photos we can share with the rest of the Fat-bike.com legions and we will mail you a sticker pack! Sven uncovered a treasure trove of old stickers in our 414 Galactic Headquarters. Just email the images to us with a little info about your bike, where the photo was taken and share your mailing address!
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We’d like to feature fatbikes from around the world!
If you’ve got a nice fat-bike-related image that you feel is “Wallpaper Worthy”, slap it in an email with what, where, why info as well as photographer’s credit to [email protected] and you may see your creative work here! Must be a horizontal (16:9 ideal or croppable to that aspect ratio), quality screen resolution (72 dpi or higher) main image to preserve image quality! Feel free to include a supporting image or two for the story body.
That guy on the paddle board wasn’t quite sure what we were up to. I wish we coulda gotten his video!