Day 540 – US – Minnesota [St Charles to Winona]

26/09/21

41km

  From St Charles (Minnesota) to Winona (Minnesota)

North America

Back towards the Mississippi River and the lakes on a glorious sunny day

Morning skies, St Charles MN

What a show again this morning. The sky was covered by an ever changing and beautifully painted trail of clouds that kept me entertained for the first half of the run. I would never understand how one can get bored on a run… [well, of course, as I am writing this I have not yet run through the Nullarbor desert in Australia, nor experienced its very repetitive landscapes day after day for weeks on end…!].

Changing landscapes

The region I ran through today is part of the Driftless Area. Driftless refers to the fact that the region was not covered by ice during the last ice age and therefore lacks glacial deposits, which are called drift. The landscapes typically consist of steep hills, forested ridge, deeply carved valleys and cold-water trout streams. I’ll stop there with my little Wikipedia report but it was indeed very different landscapes from what I have seen so far.

Sugarloaf, Winona MN

I ran past the Winona Lake on my way to town. Fun fact, actress Winona Ryder is indeed from the city and was named after the city too. The sugarloaf is the most notable sight and consists of a cliff on the Mississippi river topped by a distinctive rock pinnacle – hence the name. What an instructive blog today may I say?! Tomorrow is my last run in Minnesota before I cross into Wisconsin, which will be the 6th US state of the crossing.

Enjoy the video of today’s run: https://www.relive.cc/view/vRO7VPYRnKv

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: