82 miles. From the Irish Clare to Little Bavaria, Frankenmuth.

We started today by immediately getting back on the Pere Marquette trail for the first 30 miles or so. At one point a local cyclist joined us and chatted with us about the trail and biking. We rode three abreast for a long time and his company was much appreciated.

Sadly the trail came to an end for us and we wound our way through Midland and back on state roads through a part of Saginaw and then to Bay City and finally to Frankenmuth. We had lunch in the shade of the trees in someone’s front yard. It was a hot and long day and, true to form, at the end of the day we found an ice cream place and had malts!

Frankenmuth was settled by German Lutherans who came to the US as missionaries in the 1840s to convert the Cherokee that lived in this area. I’m not sure how the conversions went but the German flavor of the town lives on. A lot of the buildings look like Munich and many of the signs are in German.

I had a very tasty IPA at the Frankenmuth Brewery, Batch 69, a 2015 beer of the year award winner and then we had dinner at the Bavarian Inn where the wait staff males were in lederhosen. The good news is that the food was good and all you can eat, too.