40 miles.  Also biked 9 miles around Mackinac Island

After breakfast we boarded a ferry with our bikes and a lot of other tourists for the ride to Mackinac Island including a brief sail under the Mackinac Bridge.

The island is car free and home to many Victorian homes of wealthy 19th century industrialists. The Grand Hotel boasts the longest porch in the world! It’s 9 miles around the island so it didn’t take us long to circumnavigate but by the time we finished the tourist population had blossomed! There are a ton of fudge shops, gift shops, restaurants, etc. as well as bike rental shops.

Two of the private houses on Mackinac Island.

After our quick tour we boarded the ferry back to the mainland and got underway toward Petoskey. The first part of the ride was on a shaded bike path and the paved surface quickly gave way to crushed limestone, in places so thick that it was difficult to make good time. We switched over to Highway 31 that paralleled the path and rode on the shoulder for most of the rest of the way.  One woman yelled at us from her car that we should be on the bike path and a gentleman stopped his car to point out that the bike path was “right there.”  We preferred making better time to plowing through the gravel so stayed on the highway until a paved path took us the rest of the way into Petoskey.

The “dome” of hot air is still to our south but today was certainly warm and muggy. We made our usual stop for ice cream then had to pedal up a fairly steep hill to get to our hotel. “Not fair,” we cried.

Tomorrow we continue south to Traverse City, the cherry capital of Michigan, and then turn back east on the following days.