Across the Thumb

Michigan, they say, looks like a mitten...that is, if you ignore the Upper Penninsula (UP) and you are looking at the palm of your right hand.  Anyways, this is day 10 of biking since we left Chicago and we have crossed the palm, from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, and now we are crossing the thumb which is really a Penninsula sticking into Lake Huron.
Our route continues to offer remarkable variety...corn and soybean and sugar beet fields, rail trails, small towns, and interesting mid-sized towns.  We saw a bear!!! On a rail trail a couple of days ago.  People know they are around but no one we have talked to has ever seen one.  Nancy. Figured they must be around because we have seen so many bear silhouettes as lawn ornaments!
Last night we camped at Jellystone Park in Frankenmuth.  The campground was very nice...we had a "rustic" site which meant we only had 20amp electric service.  The town was a cheesy (IMHO) Barvarian themed town famous for chicken dinners...honestly.  We really enjoyed it.
Today we rode 65 miles and are staying at the Sweet Dreams Motel ($45, including tax) in the town of Yale, population 2000 or so, priceless.
Tomorrow we expect to take a short ride on a small ferry and cross cover to Canada so we can ride along the north shore of Lake Erie; we should return to the states in about a week at Niagra Falls.
The Paul Simon of my youth sang: Cathy, I said as we boarded the Greyhound in Pittsburg, Michigan seems like a dream to me now; it took me 4 days to hitchhike from Saginaw; I've gone to look for America.
And I suppose we have.

We're Back on Route

We're back to our original route and no more plotting routes.  We are currently in Michigan, we crossed Lake Michigan on the ferry from Manitowoc WI to Ludington MI on Friday afternoon.  In general the 5 days we took to get from Chicago to Manitowoc went pretty well, a good bit was on trails, though we did have one memorable day.  It started poorly when it took us 45 minutes to find the trail to get started, it seemed if we could take a wrong turn that day we did.  We had a few tense moments when we cycled through a section on the outskirts of Milwaukee - my first clue was when I went into a convenience store and the cashiere was totally glassed in, shortly after that we encountered 3 young boys with big guns on the trail, we weren't sure whether the guns were real or not, but we rode as fast as we could, no need to dawdle!  We ended up cycling about 64 miles that day.  Tonight we are camped in a city park in the town of Claire, Mi,  we are enjoying the pitter patter of rain on our tent,  dinner was snacks in the tent, the rain started just before we were going to cook dinner, no pavillion or shelter to stay out of the rain.  Our days ride varied with hills and a great stretch of straight away, a total of 69 miles!

On the road again

Day 2 - 48 scenic miles.  Greater Chicago / northeast Illinois has a lot of nature preserves and bike trails but it was challenging for us to string them together...but we did!  Even so, it felt good to get back to Wisconsin (we have good bike maps) and the rolling farmland and many rail trails!  We are getting our bike legs back and it's great to be rolling again!

A Break and Back

We're back.  Since we last wrote we left Wisconsin and entered into IL, met a great bike mechanic/ shop manager who helped navigate a route to Naperville ( burb of  Chicago) fix my brakes and made an incredible dinner for us, we stayed in a quaint Inn in Oregon, IL, witnessed a drug deal on our ride to Naperville and took the train to and back from Denver for a family wedding.  We have been out of the saddle for a little over 2 weeks.  How easy it was to slip back into urban living, my cousin and his wife were our Chicago hosts who really contributed to that easy switch.  I went shopping for wedding duds and Chris borrowed items from a number of family members.  The wedding was great fun, lots of parties, visiting and memorable times.  We stayed an extra couple of days and visited old rugby friends in Grand Junction and Arvada CO and revisited Fort Collins.  Today was our first day back bicycle touring, we didn't leave until this afternoon, rode through a couple of down pours and made it to our destination by 6:30PM - how nice it will be when we get back to our route and don't have to find our routes, today though all worked out well, doing about 3/4 of our ride on rail trails.  Tomorrow we continue north re- entering WI with the goal to reach the mid east edge to cross Lake Michigan