The rustle of autumn leaves and the sight of a golden pumpkin can bring back memories of high school football games, neighborhood battles of Kick-the-Can, and the sweet smell of leaded exhaust from your first bike. This kind of nostalgia can be dangerous, especially if you still own a bike without an electric start, because where will it lead? To a fall tour on a vintage bike, obviously. After mentioning my trip down memory lane to my wife, Linda, we decide to take two of our oldest cycles — a 1948 Vincent Rapide and a 1975 Honda CB400 Four Super Sport — out for a tour of Wisconsin's North Shore.

The shore of the northernmost lake is made famous in poetry and song, from Longfellow's tribute to the shores of Gitche Gumee, to the inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Tragic shipwrecks, 350 to date. Lonely lighthouses. Gaping mine shafts. Waterfalls. Three states, two countries. Lake Superior, all.

Truth be known, a "Father of Waters" tour should really begin at Lake Itasca in Northern Minnesota, the birthplace of the mighty Mississippi; however, to do that justice would have required stretching this three-day tour into five. I choose instead to begin my sojourn at a well known landmark, the Mall of America (MOA).

My first view of Mille Lacs Lake is an impressive one indeed. The bright midmorning sun is laying a shimmer across the wind-blown surface, creating a near blinding electric caper of refracted light that, even in broad daylight, puts the Vegas strip to shame. Another half-mile of asphalt passes beneath the Victory Kingpin Deluxe and the light show disappears, giving way to an endless cobalt blanket stretching as far as the eye can see. In an instant, a minor tweak in the sun's angle completely changes Mother Nature's stage, one of countless transformations seen daily in the "Land of 1,000 Lakes."

We've enjoyed our few days of rest in Rochester, but the lure of the highway cannot be denied. Unable to resist, we leave the city behind and again plunge into the sea of greens and golds we've come to know as Midwest farmland. Drifting lazily along the asphalt current of Highway 52, we find ourselves cruising closer and closer to yet another of middle America's major ports of call.