photos

31:15 Hint: While people are encouraged to enter, pets are generally not welcome.

We will be sorry to leave Lake Michigan tomorrow–it’s cool breezes, beautiful vistas, flat roads, and yummy ice creams, malts and fudge! All of these attributes have made the riding easier, both physically and mentally. Days of 70-90 miles in the saddle seem remarkably doable and we almost always finish by 2 pm and then have the afternoon free to relax, catch up on emails and start on the blog. We’ll see what the next few days bring. In the meantime, I wanted to share just a couple of additional photos of our ride around this Great Lake.

We haven’t been able to find warm shower hosts recently or motels with showers so I had to hand wash a couple of things. I washed, rinsed and re-washed a jersey and a pair of shorts. This is after the second washing. Who would have thought we’d pick up so much dirt after a day on the road?

We’ve had amazingly beautiful picnic lunch spots along Lake Michigan, such as this one today. We generally start looking for a spot to have lunch between the 50-60 mile mark, and have had no problem finding wonderful places around the lake. We’ll see how things work out tomorrow. Lunches are usually sandwiches packed from the morning breakfast or subway sandwiches.

I admire the local communities for providing a lot of public access to the lake. This was one of many along Rt. 2–a fairly major road with pull-offs and these stairs to the water.

A juxtaposition of the old and the new: an old cannon on Mackinaw Island from the War of 1812 and in the far distance you can see the Mackinaw Suspension Bridge finished in 1957.

We almost always bring our bikes into the room with us. It makes for a crowded room but gives us peace of mind.

On our ride out of Anacortes we rode on a sketch of asphalt where a sign warned cyclists to be ware of sharp objects. Seagulls dropped clams onto the asphalt to break them and eat the meat, leaving the sharp shells on the pavement.