Checking the forecast for the weekend it appeared that it was going to be a wet one with rain, heavy at times on Saturday and drizzle Sunday. Rather than camping we contacted a Warmshowers host in Fort Frances and arranged to wait out the storm there. Betty was an exceptional host agreeing to host not only us but also another cyclist going the other way. We had a good visit with Philippe who was riding from Montreal to Banff and then heading south on the GDMBR and continuing from there to Patagonia, a journey that he expected to take 2 years. Ride on Philippe! Lynne and I rolled across the Rainy River again into the US and headed south out of International Falls on mostly paved roads including highway 53, a major north-south corridor. As the route headed east off the pavement we saw a sign saying “Dead end”, hmm. Not a good sign. Near a farmyard we came on a grader and asked the operator about the road ahead. He replied that he never been on it and had no idea what it was like. Oh well, only one way to find out. The first few kms were pretty good with quite a few hunting cabins along the road. Coming to a locked gate we followed the quad tracks around it and continued on. The road alternated between wide open recently logged areas and dense bush right to the road edge. The trail became more of a double track and further deteriorated into a grassy quad track with numerous deadfalls to drag the bike over and many trees leaning over the trail requiring detours into the ditch to avoid them. We next passed an area of steep rolling rocky outcrops with a lot of loose material making climbing difficult. A long rough bouncing descent into a little valley ended with a beaver dam along one side of the road and the dam outflow nearly undercutting the trail which was covered in deadfall making for a bike dragging session and a push-a-bike up the other side. Coming to the top of the valley we came upon the trail covered in tree debris and deep rutted mud. It seemed we had ridden into an active logging project. Pushing through the mud from Saturday’s rain we passed more and more equipment parked in the bushes and we could hear one piece of equipment working off to the southwest. A truck, likely belonging to whoever was running the equipment was parked at the edge of an especially wet and muddy section requiring us to squeeze between it and the trees to avoid the deep mud on the other side. Pushing on through the mud for another several hundred metres the road firmed up enough to be mostly rideable with only the occasional mud hole to navigate. We passed two spots where vehicles had turned around after nearly sliding off the road and one truck turned around just a little ways in front of us. The road improved as we progressed with some grading evident and many low spots that had had gravel laid down. Coming to a fork to the left after a few more kms we emerged onto a nicely gravelled State Forest road. Yay, we made it! All we had to do now was dodge the increasing numbers of pickups and logging trucks that we met heading into the bush. Finally we re-emerged onto Highway 53 and headed to Ash Lake where a campground was supposed to exist. We found the campground but it was now a private family retreat for the previous owner’s son and his wife who we found doing maintenance on the cabins. Steve and Tammy invited us to set up our tent on the site and even brought us a jug of water before they left so we wouldn’t have to filter out of the lake. Now that’s generosity! We ate a quick supper and zipped ourselves into the tent to escape the emerging black flies. A very loud thunderstorm rumbled past us to the east, our intended path tomorrow. So will the next forest road be passable in the morning? I guess there is only one way to find out!