40 miles. Our last biking day in Michigan and a start to some much needed R and R

First of all, apologies to Yale, Michigan. Yesterday I called it the Bologna capital of the US but they aim higher and call themselves the Bologna capital of the WORLD! This weekend they are expecting over 20,000 visitors to the festival. It’s a small town with one motel (8 rooms) so I don’t know where they will put everybody!

As we rode out of town workmen were blocking off the streets and setting up large tents but we’ll miss it. It was an easy and short ride today, the first part on local roads and then 20 miles or so on the Wadhams to Avoca Trail. There the first part was crushed limestone and, since the path is multi use, was littered with a lot of horse manure we had to dodge and the path was washboard-ed so there was a bit of discomfort.

Fortunately, the paved part of the trail welcomed us and we rode in shade and quiet to Port Huron then turned south to Marine City with a nice tail wind.

The day after tomorrow we will be back in Marine City to take the ferry to Ontario for the ride around the north shore of Lake Erie and eventually to Niagara Falls and Buffalo. But today our friends picked us and our bikes up for a rest day and a half with them in Birmingham, MI.

Tomorrow we have a tour of the Affleck House in Bloomfield Hills as we try to see as many Wright houses as we can.

60 miles. Yale is the Bologna capital of the US!

After our Bavarian adventure last night, we awoke and were on the road by 7:15 heading mostly east. There was a small but helpful tailwind that made the pedaling easier but, since our air speed with tailwind is less than our ground speed, it often feels warmer than the temperature would indicate.

We found a 7 mile rail to trail path that got us off the roads for a bit but then were back on the narrow shoulder of Bike Route 20. One would expect a designated bike route to be more favorable for cycling (bike lane or wide shoulder) but that hasn’t been true. For most of the route, bikes must negotiate a narrow and often degraded shoulder with cracks, potholes and loose sections of pavement.

We arrived in Yale to discover that tomorrow begins their annual Bologna Festival — and we’ll miss it! We meet up with our friends outside Detroit tomorrow for a little R and R and a tour of the Affleck House — a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian in Bloomfield Hills, MI.

 

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.

 

 

 

62 miles. Nice bike paths for a lot of the day.

Happy Birthday to Andy Lottmann (our illustrious site administrator) and to Kai Wessels.

The day started out VERY humid … 76 degrees and 92% humidity! Foggy and mysterious as we made our way to the White Pine Trail. Eventually the fog was burned off and we enjoyed a wide, beautifully paved and very quiet way to start the day — perhaps our reward for all the noise and bother of yesterday.

We rode side by side for almost 15 miles on the White Pine and had to jump off onto county roads at the town of Leroy. Outside of Leroy a bee flew into the vent of my helmet and before I could skid to a stop and yank off my helmet he had stung me on the top of my head! Nothing serious but a temporary headache followed. The rail to trail routes are generally flat since they were rail road beds but the county roads have to go up and down all the ridges.

I had two ear worms or “stuck songs” in my head today. The first was enjoyable. It was Jeff Beck’s version of “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” Charles Mingus’ tribute to Lester Young. The second was at first funny then I couldn’t wait to get it out of my head. As we were cycling up and down the ridges I kept hearing The Kingston Trio’s “Run the Ridges” — “And we will run the ridges of our Greenland Tennessee, And we will hide for forty years if that’s what’s meant to be.” I don’t know the story behind the song but the ridge running was appropriate for parts of today. Lucky for me, Jeff Beck finally drowned out the Trio!

We dropped down into the town of Evart (we had thought of stopping here at one point in our planning but found that the only hotel in town has bed bugs — no thank you) where we joined the equally wide and well paved Pere Marquette State Trail that led us to Clare and tomorrow will take us to Midland.

The only dark spot on this fine trail was that Maja ran off into a ditch filled with cattails and very mucky water. As a testament to her cycling skills, she didn’t fall off but managed to free her clips in time to get both feet down into the muck. I lifted her bike out of the “miry clay” and Maja climbed out of it, too. Wet and stinky shoes!

We followed our route into Clare, the seat of Clare County, and if you guessed it was settled by Irish you’re right! We are in the Doherty Hotel, a fine old hotel from 1924. Another great thing about this town is that we were able to finally do some laundry! I’m sure anyone who was downwind from us the past week or so would have been grateful!

Tomorrow will be a long day as we cycle to Frankenmuth.

Admin’s note: Charles and Maja recommend that next time you’re in Clare, be sure to visit Cops & Doughnuts, a 100-year-old bakery that all nine members of the Clare police department rescued (financially) weeks before it was about to close.

51 miles. A hard day’s ride … With tons of vacation traffic,

We should have known that Sunday would be going home day for a lot of vacationers in Traverse City and Lake Michigan — not that there was a lot we could have done about it. We had an early morning thunderstorm so postponed our leaving until 9 when radar showed the rough stuff had passed us. We had two options for getting to Cadillac, one on small back roads which probably would have been hilly but with less traffic and another that rode the wide shoulder of highway 131. We started out on the back roads route but quickly changed our minds and turned around when we saw that there were many cars and RVs and no shoulder. Back we rode and started anew on the zig zag route over to 131. Again, traffic and again, no shoulder. The road itself was new and very smooth… and hilly! The first hill was the toughest we’ve had since crossing the continental divide at Glacier. To say we have lost the edge on hill climbing is putting it mildly.

After two hours on the no shoulder road we finally joined 131 with a 4′ shoulder! However, our enthusiasm was dampened by the sheer volume of traffic on the road. The ceaseless noise wore us down so when the 131 turned into 4 lanes and 70 mph speed limit, we took shelter on the old highway for the last 20 miles or so into Cadillac. That was no treat due to the deteriorated condition of the road and shoulder and then it started to rain!

OK. Enough of the kvetching. So it was a hard day but we made it and the next few days should be totally different as we ride on paved bike ways.

Maja’s note: This was one of the most nerve racking days of our trip. The traffic was horrendous in both directions so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for cars in our lane to move to the left to give us more room. I kept on pulling in my elbows, a totally meaningless gesture. And the traffic was never-ending. We also had an unnerving experience once we made it to the highway with the wider shoulders… One guy opened his window and flipped us off for absolutely no reason. I kept imagining that he was waiting for us at the next rest station. The weather also left something to be desired: a strong headwind at times, and then we also had some rain which made the conditions for the cars worse and consequently scarier for us. The upshot of all of this is that your photographer fell down on the job. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. We are hoping for a tailwind en route to Clare, where we will be staying at the Doherty Hotel–an Irish establishment. We also found out today while on the road from Traverse City that one of Brady’s friends, whom he considers more like a brother, was in Traverse City when we were there! Unfortunately, we learned about this too late to see him. Bummer. But we’ll see him and his parents, our very good friends, in Birmingham, MI in just 4 days. Yay!

66 miles. Some on a nice, paved bike path and some battling with traffic for a share of the narrow shoulder.

It wasn’t hard to get up this morning. Some of our fellow guests were packing up their car at 5 AM and had a high decibel conversation about luggage right outside our door! So, after a healthy breakfast of sweet rolls and waffles, we headed down the big hill that depressed us coming up last night. At the bottom of the hill we joined the Little Traverse Wheelway that took us 19 miles to Charlevoix. The path was nicely paved and followed highway 31 all the way – a stress free way to start the day’s ride. After Charlevoix the fun began as the route jumped on and off the highway that had, at times, a wide comfortable shoulder and at others, no shoulder at all.

Our maps told us to get off the highway onto a bike friendly side road named US Bike Route 35! It was a country road in pretty bad condition with hills but at least there was no traffic. We stopped for snack at the top of a hill and as soon as we started up again, the pot holed paved road gave way to a rocky dirt road! Not what we were looking for at all. We pushed on and turned onto a paved road as soon as we could and headed back to good old highway 31.

But we survived and eventually hooked up with the TART (Traverse Area Recreational Trail), another well paved bike path that took us right to the back door of our hotel. It is very high season here and a weekend so we paid a hefty premium for our more or less basic hotel room. We considered ourselves lucky to find this one since the various hotel booking websites said the town was sold out!

We checked in and then decided to unload the bikes and go exploring to see Traverse City. The TART took us to the downtown which is filled with restaurants, fudge shops and gift shops, just like most resort towns. We took a side street in the old part of the town and we’re happy to find a brick, tree lined street with large, old Victorian houses on both sides, all well maintained and with manicured lawns.

Tomorrow we head south to Cadillac and we are expecting some rain early and headwinds.

 

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.

 

93 miles. Includes the 5 miles lift across the bridge from the Bridge Authority

The day started with the threat of high winds, heavy rain and hail! We had joked yesterday that we wanted a 60 mph tail wind and it looked like we were going to get our wish. We rode for a few hours under overcast skies with a pleasant but not gale force tail wind. It was enough of a boost to up our average speed to 15 mph when we usually are doing 13 or so. But then the rains came! We have been very lucky on this trip having only a brief 40 minute sprinkle so far in the entire 50 days. Today’s sprinkle was a downpour for about an hour then drizzle for two more hours or so. We put on our rain gear and pedaled through. The good news is that it’s only water… We got wet but our Ortlieb panniers kept our gear dry through it all. And the strong wind and hail never materialized. At one point, just as the rain was getting very heavy, a car pulled off in front of us with its flashers on. A woman got out of the passenger side and waved us to a stop. All of us now standing in the deluge she said she and her husband want to take a long bike trip and they wanted to know what it was like biking in the rain! Wet!

We stopped at a rest stop and met a woman who give us her input about Mackinac Island and the road down to Traverse City (and so much more!) and after that time, the rain pretty much went away. Thanks to our speed earlier in the day we decided to coast on by our planned hotel in Epoufette and set out sights on St. Ignace (pronounced “Ignis” around here) and maybe the bridge over to Mackinaw City. Both Mackinac and Mackinaw are pronounced the same – mackinaw.

Cyclists are not allowed on the bridge so we paid $5 each to have a bridge employee drive us and our bikes across the bridge to Mackinaw City and he dropped us off there.

Tomorrow we will take an early ferry over to Mackinac Island and circumnavigate the place – no cars allowed – then return and start pedaling south toward Petoskey.

 

59 miles. Includes a little detour first thing this morning while we were “temporarily confused.”

We slept in a little this morning since we knew we had a relatively “short” day ahead. The weather was sunny and we had a little tail wind all day… the wind wasn’t always right at our backs but it was seldom in our faces. After a run to the north, Rte. 2 headed east across the UP following the Lake Michigan shoreline. For the most part we had a generous and smooth shoulder to ride on but oh, the trucks!!! This is logging territory so there were many heavily laden log trucks with upwards of ten axles meaning at least 40 tires all whining as they zoomed by. Big rigs used to be 18 wheelers but 40+ generate a lot of noise and wind. As I said, we had a wide and smooth shoulder to ride on so didn’t feel at risk from the trucks just slightly deaf in one ear from the ride!

The lake shoreline is beautiful and the vastness of the lake, the dunes, the seagulls all contribute to the feeling of being on the ocean. Again we saw many very nice-looking cabins and homes right on the water. Many of the mailboxes had French names on them (Robataille, LeFleur, Gagne, etc.) reminding me that French missionaries and trappers were the first settlers in the upper Great Lakes region and were only finally pushed out after the War of 1812.

 

We rode into Manistique (tomorrow we will hit Epoufette and maybe get to St. Ignace – again the French influence) and saw our favorite sight, an ice cream shop that made malts. We are becoming experts on malts and while we didn’t rate these particularly highly, they tasted mighty good.

We parked our bikes and walked the boardwalk out to the lighthouse and had our photo snapped by a couple from Colorado who spend part of the summer here at a beach cottage.