August 31, 2026 - Pine Ridge Forest Road, Savana State Forest to St. John’s Lutheran Church, Aitkin, Minnesota

Well, it poured last night! Both of our weather apps were wrong, but thank goodness, I covered the seat on Tobey’s bike anyway. Fortunately, it was just a bit foggy when we got up this morning and headed out of the forest to get Tobey on the road. We took time for him to clean and re-lube his chain after his ride yesterday which took on lots of road dirt. He finally got going about 9:30 this morning.

We both saw wild turkeys today.


Tobey saw deer, eagles, red-headed woodpeckers and even a tortoise today. The tortoise was the only one slow enough for him to catch a picture!
We both took pictures of old barns today, too! This was Tobey's barn.

This was my barn hear Berglund Park in Palisade where we took a short break for him.

I walked down and had a nice view of a trestle bridge over the Mississippi.

By noon, the clouds had pretty much disappeared and it turned hot (mid-80s) and sunny. Onward we went and had lunch about 12 miles down the road near Waldeck where he was able to rest longer after his first 40 miles. His route took him on about 8 miles of gravel before coming back to the highway.

He also saw this police car in the distance and tried to warn some drivers coming up behind him to be careful!

I guess it wasn't anything to be too worried about!

He crossed over the Mississippi River again.

We had our “Service Engine Soon” light come on yesterday, so I went on to Aitkin to the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store to have them check it out. Nice guys. They ran a diagnostic test and couldn’t find anything wrong. (I would have hoped not since we had lots of service done on this RV beast before leaving Colorado!) Anyway, they said I should be good to go – so I did!

As Tobey made his way through Aitkin to our camp spot for the night, he spotted this store.

We’re spending the night at St. John’s Lutheran Church just outside of Aitkin. I managed to find a relatively level spot and get the rig up on boards so we are totally level before Tobey got here. Tobey met a couple of the church members who were here to do some work on the church and by a weird coincidence, one of them used to live in Fort Collins! It’s a small world.

We had a beautiful sunset.

Tobey's ride was 58 miles today. We are looking forward to another quiet night before we head to Little Falls tomorrow.