CraigRegs
Well-known member
For a variety of reasons, several of them square on me, others just the way things go, this year's CFO was lightly attended. But I think all who showed would agree La Crosse in September provides great weather (most of the time) and great riding.
I arrived Wednesday evening to get a jump on cataloging the swag TangoSierra rounded up, and so I could put in a full day of riding on Thursday. Riding along the Mississippi at dusk/early evening, one tends to collect a fair number of bugs.
Those gnats were so thick in places, it was like riding through a snow storm.
After checking into the Jacuzzi suite, I made sure BeemerDon was comfy.
During previous CFO's, I'd participated in the Rally Rallye created by previous CFO organizer, RickCorwn, Got to see a lot of neat places grabbing bonii, but couldn't spend much time at any of them. This year, I intended to revisit some of those and explore them a bit more. I don't think anyone scored one particular bonus Rick created, so Thursday, I set out to secure photos of alphabet road signs to fulfill those requirements.
The "R" put me near Osseo, Wisconsin around noon, and a billboard for the Norske Nook steered me to lunch. Any place that lists "Bakery" first has my vote.
I knew it was a good decision when I saw the bakery displays inside the front door, and that was further reaffirmed when I looked at my place mat. Here's HALF of the pie list:
Here's the OTHER half:
Now keep in mind, this is printed on EVERY place mat. They don't change the line-up every day...they offer ALL of this every day! Sweet merciful Jesus, I have found the promised land!
Unfortunately, in my zeal, I neglected to get a food-**** photo of the blueberry crumble, which was amazing. I'll make up for it later in this post. Sort of.
After a full day of wandering alphabet roads, it was back to the hotel to prepare for check-in. BeemerDon and guest book were set out. DInoS. and his wife Gail were first to arrive, and we enjoyed conversation, then headed to Huck Finn's for dinner.
Friday, I was headed for more former bonii locations with PoolBoyToo (Mark). First up was the fire tower at Elba, Minnesota. The day started misty and drizzly, but the moisture let up as we worked north. As you might expect, we could see the fire tower well before arriving.
The tower was built to protect a watershed. Well, here read about it...
Doesn't look that far up!
(Can you find the fine print that forewarns of the climb to come?)
Mark and I started up. After about 50 steps, he had the sense to take a break, then turn around. I continued on.
The first flight disappears over the rise.
Past that, another set vanishes into the woods.
Get past those trees to find...
Holy mother of pearl, it went on like that for 20 minutes! Over 660 stairs! (I counted on the way back down.) All that just to get to tower. Where you get...
More stairs! I was thankful for the cloud cover and cool temps!
At the top, I was more than happy to spend a few minutes enjoying the view and catching my breath.
Then it was back down, down, down, down, down. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good at the end of it all. On Sunday, though, my calves were hurtin'!
In Elba, Mark spotted a tower he thought he could climb.
Instead, we rehydrated and headed back out on the road.
Lunch was in Fountain, MN, at the Village Square. Above average sub sandwich, but a pie I'd never heard of: creamy peach. Homemade right there, and very good.
Back in the saddle, we drifted along County Road 8 to the Root River and our next stop, one I had visited during NAFO4 and knew would have to be a regular stop any time I'm within riding distance: Aroma Pie Shoppe in Whalan, MN. Mark had the strawberry cheesecake pie, I went with the blueberry cheescake pie. Outstanding. Not too heavy, a delicate, flaky crust, and just sweet enough.
I've got to start remembering to take photos BEFORE I dig in...
BTW, if you're following the route on a map, that's about 20 minutes between pie stops. If I knew of others along the way, we'd have stopped there too.
Just a couple of blocks away from Aroma sits Ernie's Garage, another bonii location I wanted to explore. This cool old garage is wide open, and unattended as far as we could tell. Crammed with neat memorabilia from the time when the main road ran past the front door.
Looks like the locals probably still gather here for coffee and BS on a regular basis.
Small-town Minnesota, where the honor system is still honored.
Back at the hotel, it didn't take much cat wrangling to organize the group photo.
That's PoolBoyToo (Mark), Turvy (Bill), Gail, DinoS. (Dean), me, Curt, and Sarg (Gary). Turvy left his bike around the corner.
We settled on Piggy's for dinner, as the web site touted smoked meats and such. Turns out a place named Piggy's can still be rather fancy. They still let us in, and we set up Don at the head of the table with a Bushmills.
Service was a bit slow, but food was good, especially the prime rib.
After dinner, several us enjoyed ice cream, closing down the Pearl Ice Cream Parlor. Yep, that's what we do at our age...close down ice cream shops.
The next day, the Iowa Contingent (me, Curt, Mark, and Gary) headed to Dr. Evermor's Forevertron. When some of the guys asked what it was, I couldn't really explain it. But it had been another bonus stop, and one that certainly bears more time to explore. So we traversed various alphabet roads, several paved goat paths, and even a short stretch of gravel before arriving at something one must see, because it cannot be explained.
Gary, pretending he's not checking out big balls.
This may or may not have been left behind by a 60' Mark Knopfler.
Bug? Spacecraft?
Horny bird. Or something.
Weird stuff. Wild stuff. Definitely something new to discover during each visit. Although as one of our party said, "I'd hate to be in this place on 'shrooms at night."
Back on the bikes, it was off to another of my favorites, possibly the world's best pie shop: Applishus Pie Depot near Gays Mills, WI. Slices of fresh-out-of-the-oven apple pie (made with apples picked about 20' away), smothered with cinnamon ice cream caused all conversation to cease until the pie was gone. About 30 seconds.
Finally, some decent pie ****!
Saturday night, the group gathered for our banquet and swag raffle. Sarg won a set of tires, several Traxxion Dynamics certificates were won, Mark picked up a Stop N Go compressor, and more. But best of all, our small little group raised $335 for the National Motorcycle Safety Fund! Thanks to our swag sponsors, listed here, for making that possible.
We sat around til near midnight swapping lies, solving problems both worldwide and for Yamaha, laughing, discussing future CFO's (plans have begun...), and having a great evening. You shoulda been there!
I arrived Wednesday evening to get a jump on cataloging the swag TangoSierra rounded up, and so I could put in a full day of riding on Thursday. Riding along the Mississippi at dusk/early evening, one tends to collect a fair number of bugs.
Those gnats were so thick in places, it was like riding through a snow storm.
After checking into the Jacuzzi suite, I made sure BeemerDon was comfy.
During previous CFO's, I'd participated in the Rally Rallye created by previous CFO organizer, RickCorwn, Got to see a lot of neat places grabbing bonii, but couldn't spend much time at any of them. This year, I intended to revisit some of those and explore them a bit more. I don't think anyone scored one particular bonus Rick created, so Thursday, I set out to secure photos of alphabet road signs to fulfill those requirements.
The "R" put me near Osseo, Wisconsin around noon, and a billboard for the Norske Nook steered me to lunch. Any place that lists "Bakery" first has my vote.
I knew it was a good decision when I saw the bakery displays inside the front door, and that was further reaffirmed when I looked at my place mat. Here's HALF of the pie list:
Here's the OTHER half:
Now keep in mind, this is printed on EVERY place mat. They don't change the line-up every day...they offer ALL of this every day! Sweet merciful Jesus, I have found the promised land!
Unfortunately, in my zeal, I neglected to get a food-**** photo of the blueberry crumble, which was amazing. I'll make up for it later in this post. Sort of.
After a full day of wandering alphabet roads, it was back to the hotel to prepare for check-in. BeemerDon and guest book were set out. DInoS. and his wife Gail were first to arrive, and we enjoyed conversation, then headed to Huck Finn's for dinner.
Friday, I was headed for more former bonii locations with PoolBoyToo (Mark). First up was the fire tower at Elba, Minnesota. The day started misty and drizzly, but the moisture let up as we worked north. As you might expect, we could see the fire tower well before arriving.
The tower was built to protect a watershed. Well, here read about it...
Doesn't look that far up!
(Can you find the fine print that forewarns of the climb to come?)
Mark and I started up. After about 50 steps, he had the sense to take a break, then turn around. I continued on.
The first flight disappears over the rise.
Past that, another set vanishes into the woods.
Get past those trees to find...
Holy mother of pearl, it went on like that for 20 minutes! Over 660 stairs! (I counted on the way back down.) All that just to get to tower. Where you get...
More stairs! I was thankful for the cloud cover and cool temps!
At the top, I was more than happy to spend a few minutes enjoying the view and catching my breath.
Then it was back down, down, down, down, down. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good at the end of it all. On Sunday, though, my calves were hurtin'!
In Elba, Mark spotted a tower he thought he could climb.
Instead, we rehydrated and headed back out on the road.
Lunch was in Fountain, MN, at the Village Square. Above average sub sandwich, but a pie I'd never heard of: creamy peach. Homemade right there, and very good.
Back in the saddle, we drifted along County Road 8 to the Root River and our next stop, one I had visited during NAFO4 and knew would have to be a regular stop any time I'm within riding distance: Aroma Pie Shoppe in Whalan, MN. Mark had the strawberry cheesecake pie, I went with the blueberry cheescake pie. Outstanding. Not too heavy, a delicate, flaky crust, and just sweet enough.
I've got to start remembering to take photos BEFORE I dig in...
BTW, if you're following the route on a map, that's about 20 minutes between pie stops. If I knew of others along the way, we'd have stopped there too.
Just a couple of blocks away from Aroma sits Ernie's Garage, another bonii location I wanted to explore. This cool old garage is wide open, and unattended as far as we could tell. Crammed with neat memorabilia from the time when the main road ran past the front door.
Looks like the locals probably still gather here for coffee and BS on a regular basis.
Small-town Minnesota, where the honor system is still honored.
Back at the hotel, it didn't take much cat wrangling to organize the group photo.
That's PoolBoyToo (Mark), Turvy (Bill), Gail, DinoS. (Dean), me, Curt, and Sarg (Gary). Turvy left his bike around the corner.
We settled on Piggy's for dinner, as the web site touted smoked meats and such. Turns out a place named Piggy's can still be rather fancy. They still let us in, and we set up Don at the head of the table with a Bushmills.
Service was a bit slow, but food was good, especially the prime rib.
After dinner, several us enjoyed ice cream, closing down the Pearl Ice Cream Parlor. Yep, that's what we do at our age...close down ice cream shops.
The next day, the Iowa Contingent (me, Curt, Mark, and Gary) headed to Dr. Evermor's Forevertron. When some of the guys asked what it was, I couldn't really explain it. But it had been another bonus stop, and one that certainly bears more time to explore. So we traversed various alphabet roads, several paved goat paths, and even a short stretch of gravel before arriving at something one must see, because it cannot be explained.
Gary, pretending he's not checking out big balls.
This may or may not have been left behind by a 60' Mark Knopfler.
Bug? Spacecraft?
Horny bird. Or something.
Weird stuff. Wild stuff. Definitely something new to discover during each visit. Although as one of our party said, "I'd hate to be in this place on 'shrooms at night."
Back on the bikes, it was off to another of my favorites, possibly the world's best pie shop: Applishus Pie Depot near Gays Mills, WI. Slices of fresh-out-of-the-oven apple pie (made with apples picked about 20' away), smothered with cinnamon ice cream caused all conversation to cease until the pie was gone. About 30 seconds.
Finally, some decent pie ****!
Saturday night, the group gathered for our banquet and swag raffle. Sarg won a set of tires, several Traxxion Dynamics certificates were won, Mark picked up a Stop N Go compressor, and more. But best of all, our small little group raised $335 for the National Motorcycle Safety Fund! Thanks to our swag sponsors, listed here, for making that possible.
We sat around til near midnight swapping lies, solving problems both worldwide and for Yamaha, laughing, discussing future CFO's (plans have begun...), and having a great evening. You shoulda been there!
