Day one route...

Here is the route from the beautiful ride on our first day. These roads are glorious, I can't stop smiling. We started our journey at the Viroqua Food Co-op in downtown Viroqua, Wi. About 20 miles into the ride, after passing some beautiful sunflower fields buzzing with hardworking bees, we came to our first stop, New Forest Farm. Mark and Jen Shepard have designed this incredibly diversified, highly productive permaculture farm in a very conscious way to maximize food production while creating a thriving perennial ecosystem. Some of the main food crops grown are hazelnuts, chestnuts, asparagus, and apples. We were thrilled to try some kiwi berries, which look and taste just like normal kiwis but are the size of a grape. So delicious! Why aren't these growing everywhere in Wisconsin??! As we rested in the cydery for lunch, Mark offered up some samples of his legendary hard cyder as he mused about the complex, yet simple wonders of spirals. Natural patterns like these are found everywhere, like in the sunflowers we passed earlier on our ride, and offer insight of ways to create agricultural systems that easily integrate into our surrounding environment. You don't find straight lines in nature, and unlike the many fields of corn we passed all lined up in neat and tidy rows, Marks farm is full of curves and spirals, blurring the boundaries between "farm" and "nature" and allowing it all to mesh together seamlessly.
We then continued along the beautiful, and hilly, ridge-top roads headed towards our first cheese factory of the tour, Meister Cheese in Muscoda. After filling up on samples, we naively decided to stop in the grocery store to pick up some all-fruit popsicles like I'm used to getting at the Co-op. My bubble was quickly burst as I walked up to the freezer only to find neon colored boxes of "fruit-flavored" popsicles, none of which seemed to contain even a slight trace of actual, real fruit. This prompted me to look around the store a bit further, realizing how little real food is actually available at the common grocery store. As I wandered down the cereal isle under those aweful florescent lights, it was such a stark contrast to all the bounty of delicious, nourishing food I was nibbling on in the sunshine just hours ago up at Mark's farm. I am so appreciative for all the quality food we will be encountering on this trip!
And on to the best part of the day: we eagerly headed to the campsite so we could get out the pack rafts and enjoy the river! I really can't stop smiling!
-Jackie