Day 48, 7/31, Petoskey State Park, MI to Traverse City, MI: 93.2 miles, 4,379 ft elevation gain, 11.1mph average speed.
Trip totals: 2,932.2 miles (71.5 mile daily average), 122,310 ft elevation gain, 12.5 mph overall average speed.

One day behind schedule.

These two pictures sum up much of the biking part of the day:

Except change Breezeway to Wind Tunnel and Steep Hill to Series of Steep Rolling Hills Lasting for 40 Miles. 

The day started out nicely with a dedicated bike path taking us five miles into the town of Petoskey. Petoskey is another touristy town with cute shops, cafes, etc. There was a coffee shop that looked like it came straight out of Brooklyn (Dripworks) that we would have stopped at, except we were hoping to make it to Interlochen, 100 miles away, and wanted to leave enough time to explore Traverse City. I’d like to come back to the northeastern coast of Lake Michigan eventually, though, without such a strict schedule. Had we not used up all of those rest days in Glacier, I would have liked to spend a few days exploring this area because it’s absolutely gorgeous and the water is the perfect temperature for swimming. Why have I never heard about this area before? I think the people who regularly vacation here want to keep it a secret. It’s just perfect here. 

   
 We climbed a large hill out of Petoskey onto a gravelly paved road leading to Wallon Lake, another tourist town on a turquoise lake. We were setting a slow pace this morning. It was hilly and the hills were quite steep, but I think we also saw how nice it could be to ride bikes slowly when we visited Mackinac Island and sort of subconsciously adopted that slow pace. We decided that we’d probably only make it to Traverse City tonight, 20 miles short of our goal, but the annual film festival was happening this weekend, so campsites and hotels were pretty well booked. We contacted three warm showers hosts in hopes that one of them would accept a last-minute request. 

We carried on to Boyne City, guided by some handy arrows for a local biking event that perfectly matched the circuitous ACA route, to eat breakfast. As an aside, ACA’s route through this region is wacky and it seems inefficient. The maps say this is because they’re trying to keep us on paved roads, but I have to believe there’s a better way. It seems like they’re aiming for the hilliest bits of the state, too!

   
      We got some local chocolate milk and snacks at the food coop in Boyne City, then sat in a lovely park by the water to eat. This chocolate milk was not quite as good as Crystal Farms or Dairigold, but better than any others we’ve tried. 

   
    We pushed on, slowly, toward Torch Lake. The hills got worse and so did the headwind. This was some of the tougher riding we’ve done recently and I was more tempted than ever to hitchhike. Enough complaining, though. It was hard work, but we made it through. 

Between each of these tourist towns are a bunch of farms and economically depressed farm towns, much like what we saw further west. It’s strange to see such different lifestyles in such close proximity. From multimillion dollar second homes with multimillion dollar yachts docked out front in Harbor Springs to corn fields and abandoned, crumbling buildings in East Jordan. I suppose this isn’t an uncommon phenomenon,  but it’s interesting to experience it on a bike. 

   
    Torch Lake is a long, narrow, turquoise lake, and it was spectacular. We got some nice views for the first half mile that we traced the lake, then we stopped at a little baked goods stand called Sami’s Sweets in front of a beautiful lakefront home being run by a pre-teen girl named Sami. Sami is quite the entrepreneur: she had rocky road cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and cupcakes for sale and was even selling a small cookbook that she had professionally printed and bound. All of her goods had stickers with a custom, professionally printed logo, and she had an army of younger kids helping her work the stand (who were quick to tell me that they were not being paid for their labor).  I wish I had that initiative at her age! And the business sense to not pay her employees – genius! We bought one of each thing and the kids’ moms offered to refill out water bottles, a service we are always grateful to receive. 

Another man stopped to buy a cupcake and asked us why we chose the route we chose instead of the more direct route to Traverse City on the other side of the lake. We told him we were following the ACA maps and that we expected this side to be more scenic. He shrugged and said, “yeah, well, you’ve got Alden coming up and that’s one of the more picturesque places you’ll see.” We assumed he was just inured to the beauty and that the rest of the road would still be pretty nice, so we decided not to backtrack toward the shortcut. 

That man was right. Nineteen miles of trees and people’s driveways to their lakefront homes. No water views. Alden was beautiful, though, and we ate at a restaurant called Mama’s Country Kitchen because they were having a Friday fish fry! We’ve heard about Friday fish fries since Fargo, but have never been in the right place at the right time to experience one. We each ate seven large pieces of cod, fries, and Ted ate coleslaw. We were stuffed and reluctant to start the second half of our day. After leaving, we stopped to take one last sit by Torch Lake before pushing on. 

   
 We made our way to state route 72, which was a pretty busy road. Michigan’s larger state routes are actually pretty nice and have nice shoulders for the most part. But Michigan does this annoying thing with the shoulders on its large state routes, at least the ones we’ve ridden: they create passing lanes by sacrificing the shoulder. And cars don’t react by getting into the left lane to pass with care, even when there’s plenty of room to do so. Of course the first time everyone is obedient to the “keep right except to pass” sign is when I’m riding a bike on a two-foot shoulder. 

Our time on 72 was short, though, and we were rewarded with a dedicated bike path that, aside from a short detour, led us all the way into Traverse City, but first to a Culver’s where we loaded up on Concretes, mine much larger than Ted’s. 

   We stopped at a bike shop to pick up a spare tube because Ted’s back tire has been getting a little splashy after a few days, which he thinks might be the result of a poor patch job. The shop had closed over an hour before, but they accidentally left their “Open” sign on and left the door unlocked. We surprised the guys working there when we walked in, but they still rung us up (they had also forgotten to close out the register – these things happen when you start drinking immediately after closing up the shop) and gave us a handy tip about using a dollar bill as a tire boot. 

Then we headed to a wonderful food coop called Oryana that puts the Park Slope food coop to shame. This place was huge and beautiful, and they had an incredible selection of bulk goods and produce, etc. from local farms. We picked up a few things, got a discount for riding our bikes there, and talked to some friendly folks outside. We mainly talked to Marlene and Isaiah Smith, a couple that recently moved from DC to Traverse City after retiring. They were lovely people and they made us want to move to Traverse City!

  
We then headed to a bar called The Little Fleet, which is a bar with garage doors that open up into an outdoor eating area and a parking lot with a fleet of food trucks. So cool! Our warm showers host for the night works there, so we went to say hi and grab a beer and maybe something to eat before heading to his house to sleep because we were both exhausted. We both got a beer and tacos (blackened whitefish for me, Korean beef for Ted) and hung out on the patio listening to live music. Ted ran into another bike tourist while getting another round of drinks so we chatted with him for a while. Maarten is from Belgium (Hoegaarden, in fact!) and is traveling from Vancouver to Montreal by way of…the Grand Canyon. This wasn’t his original plan, but he and his traveling partner decided to take a 2,000 mile detour to visit the Grand Canyon and the American Rockies. He’s meeting his Dad in Montreal, and they’re going to explore Quebec together. 

   
       While we were chatting, Pauly, our host, came over to tell us that his friend offered to finish his shift, so he was free to show us around town. He brought us another round of beers, a mix of Bell’s Two-hearted IPA and a Grapefruit IPA. It’s a Little Fleet special, called the “Jason Allen,” named after the bartender who invented it. 

We ended up sitting and chatting with him for a while. He is an instructor pilot when he isn’t bartending, and he’s getting ready for a bicycle trip from Vancouver to Tijuana in the fall. After a while, we headed to another bar with an extensive taplist, where we had our first sour beers of the trip (aside from those New Glarus bombers, one of which Ted is still carrying).

Pauly kept introducing us to friends of his, and next thing we knew the lights were coming on and the bar was closing. This was not the plan, but it was fun. We made it back to Pauly’s apartment, jumped through the shower, and crashed on his futon around 1:30a. 

I don’t think we’re starting at 6:00a tomorrow. 

Day 46, 7/29, Indian Lake, MI to St. Ignace, MI: 96.8 miles, 1,852 ft elevation gain, 13.6 mph average speed.
Trip totals: 2,775.6 miles (71.2 daily average), 115,931 ft elevation gain, 12.5 mph overall average speed.

One day behind schedule.

There is an epidemic here in Michigan. We’re in the land of the inappropriate quotation mark. For example: 

Please close the toilet seat lid. “Thank you!”

We hope you have a “wonderful” day!

“Free” WiFi. 

All real signs we’ve seen in the U.P. But Big Boy Restaurant, a restaurant chain with multiple signs throughout the U.P., crosses the line from just being grammatically incorrect to changing the meaning of a statement in an unambiguously bad way:

Big Boy Restaurant. The “fresh” choice. 

Can someone tell me why this is so common up here? Is it an alternative to using bold or italics for emphasis? It’s driving me “crazy!”

  
On to more interesting and important things, like the sunrise Michigan gifted us this morning. 

   
    Probably the best sunrise I’ve seen in my life, but definitely the best of the trip. Did I mention that this was the view from our tent? Needless to say, we woke up feeling very lucky today. Especially because we got a sunset from our campsite last night; how often do you get a sunrise and a sunset from the same campsite? Or either from any campsite?

As usual, Ted had to wake me up to watch the sunrise in the midst of doing all of the packing work. He even removed the rainfly for me so I could watch the sunrise while I packed up my sleeping pad in the tent! I don’t know how he puts up with how slow and grumpy I am in the morning, but he does it every day with a smile on his face. 

We started off around 6:30a (not bad, not great) and it was the perfect temperature for riding. After about 6 miles on quiet state roads, we entered Manistique, a tourist town that seemingly required all of the businesses to have 50s-era signs. Then we got on US 2, where we would spend the rest of the day. 

US 2 follows the northern coast of Lake Michigan and we were promised miles upon miles of lake views. We technically had miles of lake views, less than 10 miles, but the other 80+ miles were boring, high-traffic highway riding. The good thing about boring riding, though, is that it usually equals flat riding, and today was no exception. Just a couple small hills the whole day, mostly toward the end. And the good thing about highway riding is that there’s often a giant shoulder, so it’s fairly low-stress despite the traffic. 

The road was lined with motels and resorts for much of the day, many of which were closed or for sale, few of which had many cars parked in their lots. It seems tourism in the UP is past its heyday. 

Every once in a while we could see turquoise water peeking out between pine trees in less-dense portions of the forest that separated us from the lake, so we were excited for those miles upon miles of lakeshore riding everyone told us about. 

We hit a grocery store about 20 miles in and decided it was time for breakfast. The store had a pretty limited selection, so we decided to feed an ongoing craving we’ve both been battling: Cocoa Pebbles. 

Have you ever seen two people devour a box of cereal and nearly a half gallon of whole milk in under 5 minutes? It’s probably not a pretty sight, but we both enjoyed every pebble. 

  
We rode for 30 more unremarkable miles before stopping for smoothies and free WiFi. The shop also sold pasties, the UP’s version of a meat pie, so we got one of those because everyone we met told us we had to try one. We also got a cinnamon roll, for good measure. The pasty tasted like a samosa that was missing all of the spices that make samosas taste good. It came with a side of ketchup that was, I’m not kidding, a quarter of a cup large. I guess that’s the alternative to spicing the filling? Everything else was good, and we sat for a little too long, as we do, fighting with the slow WiFi. 

We rode for many more boring miles punctuated by small tourist towns until we finally encountered those views! Lake Michigan is gorgeous–the first non-brown water we’ve seen since Glacier–and the crosswind we had all day created waves that made the lake look like an ocean. The first pictures below are from the gloomy (read: pleasantly cool) morning, and the last pictures are from the sunny afternoon. 

   
         We noticed that lots of people parked their cars on the shoulder (annoying, because it’s our lane) to swim in the lake, so we made our first spontaneous decision: lake swimming! We swam for a bit, and Ted bodysurfed with surprising success (his first ever successful body surfing in a lake), before eating some cheese curds and beef sticks on triscuits by the lake. It was a lovely way to spend an hour.

We headed down the road for the final 15 miles before we hit St. Ignace, the last town in the UP. The options for getting to the mitt of Michigan include taking transport over a massive bridge on which bikes are prohibited or taking a ferry to Mackinac Island, a tourist island that is 80% state park and only allows bike and horse traffic, then taking another ferry to the mitt. The plan was to take the bridge transport because even though the island is supposed to be incredible, we’re running short on time and have an aggressive schedule for the next week to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake to visit Ted’s family. As soon as we got to St. Ignace, though, we decided that since we will probably never visit this corner of the world again, we should go to the island. Spontaneous decision number 2. 

  
This was great news to me because it cut 11 miles off of an already long day, and those miles would have been directly into a headwind. 

We found a state campground in town and settled in for the night. We then took a quick ride to the beach for a failed attempt at watching another sunset (blocked by a hill), then, spontaneous decision number 3, we rode our bikes to the grocery store to buy peanut butter Oreos and a small bottle of milk for dessert. 

  
A man who bike toured extensively in the 70s came to our campsite to chat for a bit. He made me very grateful for all of the progress bikes and camping gear have made in the past 40 years. 

We will wake up early to take the earliest ferry to Makinac Island tomorrow!

Day 45, 7/28, Escanaba, MI to Indian Lake, MI: 53 miles, 1,064 ft elevation gain, 13.1 mph average speed.
Trip totals: 2,678.8 miles (70.5 mile daily average), 114,079 ft elevation gain, 12.5 mph overall average speed.

Two days behind schedule.

We woke from a deep deep sleep this morning at 6:00. We slept well, but just not long enough. After packing up our stuff and saying goodbye to Al, we started our ride at 6:55a–earlier than we’ve been managing lately but still nowhere close to that stretch of days when we were riding by 5:30. 

We decided to make today a short day. The plan was to ride 50 miles, get to a campground early, and get lots and lots of sleep tonight. We are very sleep deprived right now and it’s making us grumpy. 

  
The ride started out with less than two miles on town roads before we got on US 2, our old friend, as busy as ever. Outside Escanaba, US 2 is a separated, four-lane highway, reminiscent of I-94.  At least there was a wide, smooth shoulder. Well, except for one terrifying moment where it disappeared completely as US 2 passed underneath a bridge.

Our first stint on US 2 was only four or five miles long, and then we exited to follow the lakeshore through Gladstone. Shortly after leaving the highway, our plans for efficiency were thwarted by McDonald’s, which continually has enough gal to build restaurants exactly where we are at breakfast time.

A couple sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddles, a few conversations about our tour with disbelieving elderly gentlemen during their weekly breakfast club, and an hour later, and we were back on the road… for a mile. Then we stopped again at a grocery store. This was a good stop though. In part because it hasn’t been as available, we’ve gotten away from snacking on fruit and moved toward peanut butter oreos. And we’ve started to get sick of junk food, so we wanted to stock up on some good stuff. And Gushers. Good stuff and Gushers.

After a few more miles, we were back on US 2, this time for 27 miles. It was a put-your-head-down-and-pedal sort of ride. The traffic was a little lighter this time around, but still worse than anything we’ve seen since we were on I-94.

We stopped to buy cold drinks after 23 miles on US 2, and then rode another mile to eat lunch at a rest stop off the highway. We reminisced about the days we would ride 50 miles before 9:30a, and there we were with 37 miles at 11:30a.

This break lasted a little long, as is the trend. Dani tried to take a nap on the bench after eating, but when I let her know we were only 15 miles from our campground, she popped right up and got ready to go. Apparently she thought we were still 25 miles away, which seemed long enough in her mind to justify a nap. As I said, we’re sleep deprived. 

  
We rode on country roads for the rest of the day, which was a refreshing, if slightly hillier, change of pace. We stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few more things for dinner, then continued to the campground. About a mile before we reached our campground, we came across a private campground that was cheaper than the state park at which we planned to camp, so we stayed there. Plus, this place is not so popular because of its primitive facilities, so we were able to snag a beachfront spot!

We quickly set up camp, then went swimming, washing our selves and clothes (with biodegradable soap, of course) in the lake. The lake is very shallow, so we didn’t swim so much as sit. It was refreshing, though; the perfect end to a day of riding. We also got to see many different types of sky during the seven hours of daylight we had there, hence the multiple pictures of the same view above and below. We sat next to the lake and caught up on blog posts, made dinner around 5:30p, watched the sun set, and were in the tent by 9p. 

   
   Here’s to a restful night in preparation for a long day tomorrow!

Day 44, 7/27, east of Gaastra, MI to Escanaba, MI: 89.1 miles+4.6 (recorded) miles around town, 2,803 ft elevation gain, 12.8 mph average speed.
Trip totals: 2,625.8 miles (71 mile daily average), 113,015 ft elevation gain, 12.5 mph overall average speed.

Two days behind schedule.

The riding today just wasn’t fun. When you’re riding across the country, there’s bound to be a few stretches that are just unenjoyable for one reason or another, but this one was unenjoyable for several reasons.

The roads were generally poorly maintained, busy, lacking a shoulder, or some combination of the three. The towns we passed were more run down than cute, the terrain was not particularly attractive, and the convenience stores had dismal selections of cold drinks. The weather was hot and headwind-y and hot. Everyone we passed told us it was too hot of a day for a “pedal bike ride,” as if we woke up and decided to ride bikes with luggage on them for fun today. Yeah, we know it’s too hot to be doing what we’re doing, and you pointing it out doesn’t make it any easier.

  We stopped about 15 miles from our final destination and took shelter in a cool, dark bar with one patron. The patron wanted to talk to us nonstop about our trip, and I’m afraid we weren’t the best bike touring ambassadors at the time. We very unconvincingly said that bike touring was the best way to travel, that we usually had fun, blah blah. But all either of us wanted to do was sit in silence drinking Gatorade poured over ice because regular refrigerated Gatorade wasn’t cold enough for us (we are such wimps these days). And this guy was a talker.

They also reminded us that we would enter eastern time in a few miles, which meant we would arrive to Escanaba an hour later than we expected. Which meant tonight would be another night without enough sleep.

   We pushed through 89 miles of this hot monotony, determined, but perhaps not without complaint. Luckily, no one could hear us complain. We couldn’t even hear each other. We mostly just heard the wind.

 Anyways, after (finally) making it into Escanaba, we stopped at Culver’s to reward ourselves with ice cream treats. Dani had a chocolate concrete, which she said was heads and tails better than the DQ Blizzard she had a few days ago, and I had a mango smoothie. We’ll have to keep our eyes open for Culver’s; any store that sells ice cream and butters both sides of their hamburger buns is OK with me.

Once our core temperature cooled down a bit, we headed over to meet our warm showers host for the evening. Al was the bright spot on this otherwise dreary day. He grew up near Escanaba and then spent 20 years in the military before coming back. He is a chef, bike commutes year round (winter in the UP!!?!), and was instrumental in getting a lakeside disc golf course constructed in Escanaba.

As we were visiting with him, his daughter and her boyfriend came by to say hi. Just lovely people all around.

Al took us on a six or so mile tour around town. He was an excellent guide, pointing out historic buildings and telling us their stories. We saw Al Capone’s old house (pictured below), the beautiful park on Lake Michigan, and several stately old buildings. We also learned that there was a tunnel leading from the House of Ludington to Al Capone’s hideout, so he could go to his favorite place to hang out without being seen. The buildings were probably a half mile away from one another. After the tour, we visited Al’s (Al, our host, not Al Capone) restaurant, which also happen to be the first brew pub on the UP, and had a round of great beer. Then we headed back to his house, grabbing a barbecue chicken pizza and some breadsticks on the way.

            We were both exhausted after our draining ride, so we headed to bed almost immediately after we finished eating. I think we’re going to make tomorrow a short day.

Day 43, 7/26, Manitowish Waters, WI to five miles east of Gaastra, MI: 83.5 miles, 3,879 ft elevation gain, 13.2 mph average speed.
Trip totals: 2,532.1 miles (70.3 mile daily average), 110,212 ft elevation gain, 12.4 overall average speed.

Two days behind schedule.

Ted woke up before me, yet again, and readied our things while I slept. What a guy.

I wanted to explore the Discovery Center’s interpretive nature trail and bog Boardwalk, so we took a quick jaunt down the path while eating s’mores poptarts for breakfast. We learned about lichen, bog temperatures, and other such things, then got nervous about getting such a late start and rushed back.

    We headed out around 8:30a (so late!) and were surprised to discover a beautiful bike path right next to the road on which we were meant to ride. We figured it was just a local bike path connecting the various resorts to town (Manitowish Waters is the schmanciest resort town we’ve encountered), so we tried not to get our hopes up that it would last. The path went through a few different ecosystems, from old-growth forest to bog to grassland, and it seemed like its designers made it curvier and hillier than necessary to make it more interesting. The hills were fun, though. They were short enough that the momentum gained from going downhill carried us uphill with very little effort. It almost felt like a roller coaster.

    We started to see a few more serious looking cyclists on the trail, so we got a little more optimistic about the length of the path. Then we saw a map and noticed that the trail went all the way to two miles outside of the next town, which meant we’d have 13 miles of unexpected car-free riding this morning!

We enjoyed this nice surprise for the remaining miles, then when we reached the end, we found that the path actually did continue into the next town. We also did a little research last night and found a fancy coffee shop (Northern Lattes – haha) in the next town, so we were excited for our mid-morning break, too. We got off to a good start today!

I got a dirty chai, Teddy got a large coffee, and we both got fancy pastries, then we relaxed in perfect weather on the porch. With the high-mileage days we’ve been pulling, it’s nice to slow down and do normal human things every once in a while.

Turns out we weren’t the only ones out for a Sunday bike ride; the shop’s bike rack quickly filled up with bikes. Pretty much everyone who rode up on a bike gave our bikes a funny look, and a few groups asked us if we were on an overnight camping trip. That’s an understatement, but basically correct. Everyone was shocked when we told them we were going across the country and had a million questions about what we were carrying and how we were surviving with so few things. Because we’re now off the main cross-country route, there are many fewer bike tourists and I guess a lot of people don’t understand that riding a bike across the country is a) possible, and b) something anyone would choose to do.  We have had to do a lot more explaining during the last few days.

We sat on the porch for two full hours before motivating ourselves to leave, and by the time we left, it was pretty hot. Luckily, we had miles of tree-lined country roads ahead of us. The roads were gorgeous and not very busy, and the hills were small enough for the first 20 miles or so that we could use momentum to help us get uphill.

     We got to Phelps in time for lunch and found an ice cream / candy shop right at the beginning of town. We planned to eat PB&J on crackers for lunch and hoped that if we bought a couple drinks and promised to buy ice cream after lunch, they’d let us sit in their air conditioned seating area to eat lunch because it was unpleasantly hot out. They did! I got fresh-squeezed lemonade and Ted got nostalgic soda (cherry cola), and we talked to some folks about our bike tour. These folks’ family has lived in Phelps for decades and they shared a little Phelps history. Apparently Al Capone and John Dillinger used to hide out in Phelps, among other places in this region. Then we both got ice cream. They had my favorite flavor (chocolate peanut butter swirl) and Ted’s favorite way to eat ice cream (sandwiched between two chocolate chip cookies) so we were both pretty pleased.

We headed out into the heat for the final 48.5 miles of the day at 3p. In other words, if we didn’t take breaks and the hills weren’t too bad, we would get to camp at 7p. Not great.

We rode for a bit and found that there were tons of hills and it was still hot, so we took many breaks. We considered stopping 32.5 miles short of our goal at Santa’s Backwoods Motel in Nelma because we were so hot and tired (and because the name is hilarious and I was curious about the decore in the rooms), but the town was a creepy ghost town and we would be setting ourselves up for a few miserably long days if we stopped, so we pushed on.

After crossing the Michigan border, the roads got really bad. They had recently oiled and repainted lines on the road from the state line to about 10 miles into the state, which, from my perspective, serves only to make the roads look nice and mask their poor condition. The road was still crumbling despite the shiny surface.

 Riding on crumbling roads is frustrating mainly because of the stress it puts on your hands and butt. The bumps are so painful, especially toward the end of the day. To make matters worse, the grades of the hills steepened. It was also still humid and hot. After riding in these conditions for about 14 miles, we got cold drinks from a convenience store and Ted called a motel down the road and negotiated a reasonable rate because the next campground was another 20 miles away and I was very done for the day. By the way, don’t be fooled by the smoothness of the road pictured below. They had repaved exactly one of the twenty miles we rode in Michigan today, just so things looked nice at the beginning of the small town we were approaching.

We rode the final 6 miles to the motel and immediately changed into swimsuits and rode our bikes down to a beach the hotel manager recommended, about a half mile down the road. Turns out the beach was also a campground that was hidden in the corner of our next map section! Somehow we missed it and ended up spending three times as much for a hotel room than we would have spent to camp on a beach. We felt pretty dumb at this point. We hate making mistakes, especially when they cost money.

We didn’t let it ruin our time, though. We always wish for a lake at the end of a hot day and we finally got our wish! We swam out to a floating platform with a diving board and dove in a couple times, then swam to some smooth, anchored logs to sit for a while. I learned that swimming is hard after riding a bike all day. Go figure.

We headed back to our motel where we browsed the motel’s extensive VHS collection, settling on My Cousin Vinny and Notting Hill. We ordered a meal that consisted of a 1.5-pound burger sandwiched between two grilled cheese sandwiches, with cheese, bacon, and salami as toppings, and a pound of fries. The meal was meant for one person, but it was filling enough, even for two hungry cyclists, to share.

We enjoyed watching movies (though Notting Hill was disappointing; I should never trust my taste in movies as a 14-year-old) and sleeping in another comfy bed, but are excited to camp again. We’re getting soft!

Day 42, 7/25, East of Hayward, WI to Manitowish Waters, WI: 87.7 miles, 3,952 ft elevation gain, 13.4 mph average speed.
Trip totals: 2,448.6 miles (70 mile daily average), 106,333 ft elevation gain, 12.41 overall average speed.

Two days behind schedule.

***a note on stats: It has come to our attention that the elevation numbers from the Ride with GPS app can be wildly inaccurate. When I upload the rides to Strava (a different ride-tracking app), I often get much lower numbers. I’ll keep including them for the sake of comparison, but take them with several grains of salt.***

I woke up at 5:45a to start getting our stuff together. I headed downstairs to start loading up the bikes around 6:00a and there was Gerry, already up and making breakfast for all of us. A hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage, today, and orange juice was ready fifteen minutes later, and we eagerly chowed down.

Gerry and Mary decided to ride with us for the first 11 miles of our day, and after breakfast we all busied ourselves getting ready to go. After a few false starts, the five of us caravanned off. This was the biggest group we’ve ridden in since Logan Pass, and I really enjoy riding as part of a pack. I marvel at the people who are doing this trip alone. I think I would break down doing all of this riding without company.

  
The 11 miles we rode with Gerry and Mary brought us to state route 77, which as a two-lane, low-traffic highway was much busier than the quiet county roads we’ve ridden on the last few days. However, it was newly resurfaced, which made riding on it feel like riding on air compared to some of those same county roads.

We said goodbye to Gerry and Mary, and Dani, Meng, and I jumped on 77 and headed east. We stopped at a gas station in Clam Lake to stretch, snack, and try to diagnose a creaking noise that Dani’s bike started making with every other pedal stroke when she hit a big pothole earlier on. We adjusted the rear hub cones and repositioned the fender and the noise went away.

We continued on the beautifully smooth 77 for another 17 miles to Glidden, which was Meng’s final destination for the day. After saying goodbye, we carried on for nine more miles (on a good, but less smooth road) to Butternut. We were excited to get to Butternut a) because it’s a fun name for a town and b) because the couple we meet yesterday in Edgewater recommended Jumbo’s Diner in Butternut to us, using words no bike tourist can resist, “They serve huge portions of good food for really cheap prices.”

They were right. Jumbo’s is a great little diner set back from the road a little bit. The locals eating there didn’t seem to know what to make of us, and so they all just stared at us for 10 or so minutes after we sat down. We unknowingly made it in just a half hour before they closed, thank goodness. I had a chicken quesadilla and Dani had a chili cheese omelet. I also grabbed a big $0.60 cookie for later.

After Jumbo’s, we were back on county roads for the next 30 miles. Our route took us through some gorgeous lake country and past the Turtle Flambeau Flowage. 

It was beautiful, but hot, and we were excited to make it into Mercer to grab a cold drink and buy some groceries for dinner before the final push into Manitowish Waters. As we were standing around the gas station drinking Gatorade, Carol from Connecticut rolled up. She is on a tour from Vancouver back to her home, by way of Jasper and Banff national parks. She stayed at the same place as us, and is a remarkable woman. She is survived a multiple-year battle with cancer, and promised herself that if she made it through she was going to really live. Her enthusiasm and optimism was infectious, and she was a delight to be around.

Anyways, from the gas station we swung by the grocery store to shop for dinner and New Glarus beer. Beer from the New Glarus Brewery is as famous as it is rare (for those of us that don’t live in Wisconsin, at least). They only distribute here and I was determined to try some before we head into Michigan tomorrow. First I had to decide between mixing a six pack of their standard beers or going for a bomber of their specialty stuff. After a while, I decided to go the specialty route, but then I had to pick from the three that were available.

Oops. Oh well, good beer is worth carrying.

After the grocery store, it was a fast 10 miles to the North Lakeland Discovery Center, a lakeside lodge and education center on an undeveloped lake that allows touring cyclists to stay for free when rooms are available. It’s a fantastic place. We had our own room, and access to free showers, laundry, and use of their kitchen. We showered and called our parents before heading to the kitchen to make a stew-y sort of meal with rice, beans, potato, zucchini, green pepper, and tomato. And lots of spice (because Dani cooked and that’s just what happens).

After dinner we drank a New Glarus beer while watching the sun set over the lake.    

The mosquitoes came out in full force after the sunset, so we headed back to our room where we tried to catch up on the blog, but quickly succumbed to exhaustion. One day we’ll catch up.