Round Lake Michigan - Day Six

St. Ignace, Michigan to Manistique, Michigan

The original online journal entry:

The rising sun.
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Black Water Creek
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Actual Date: 2005-07-17
Uploaded: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:00:07 -040
Distance: 146.94 km

Today turned out to be a pretty nice touring day.

I woke up at 04:30 in the hopes of capturing another cool sunrise picture but alas it was too overcast and foggy. Another time I guess.

I got on my way by 05:00 and dropped by Bad Boy for a breakfast of pancakes, bacon and hot chocolate.

The route today was almost disappointingly flat. After the last few days of climbing some serious hills all day the three baby ones I saw today weren't that impressive.

What was cool about today are several events that took place.

First of all I crossed paths with a husband and wife fully loaded/self-contained touring team. I spent a very enjoyable hour with them sharing touring stories and fig newtons.

Black Water Creek.
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A waiting spider.
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It turns out that they are on a 25 day tour taking them around the northern half of Lake Michigan. Today is day 12 of their tour.

Later on in the conversation I discovered that when the husband was 18 he took off on a 2.5 year bicycle world tour. That was cool to hear about. I am hoping that they drop me an email so I can learn more about their adventures.

I also learned today from several motorcyclists that there are between 10 and 100 bicycle tourists somewhere around 20 to 60 miles behind me. I think that this might be the league of michigan tour group I've been hearing about for days. It would be nice to meet them but I am not sure if that will happen.

Another neat thing that happened today is that I went swimming in the afternoon to cool down a bit. I didn't end up in Lake Michigan but rather an inland one that I noticed on my map and took a detour to.

After swimming alone for an hour I climbed out and fell asleep for about 90 minutes under a shady tree.

Continuing with the good news a quick glance at the map leads me to believe that I am likely, barring injury, mechanical failure etc, to get to my ride point in time.

This is great news since it should allow me to relax a bit more and do more touring things like swimming.

~Jamie

Post tour comments about this day:

My afternoon swimming spot on Lake Milakokia.
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Two very interesting and enjoyable bicycle tourists.
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Looking back on the tour I believe that the swimming break along with the short snooze was probably the most peaceful and refreshing moment of the entire tour for me. Don't get me wrong because there were many other great moments but this one ranks quite highly in my memory.

When I woke up this day I was strongly considering making an attempt at breaking my personal long distance record. As it turned out I used the day instead to meet some very interesting people and spend some time relaxing. Records can always be taken on a different day.

I took some pictures of the Black Water River (or a similar name) earlier in the day. This river featured the lovely dark brown colour that I've come to love whenever I head north and surprisingly it was ice cold when I stood in the river wearing my sandals to take a picture.

On this day I passed the northern most point of Lake Michigan. I also saw and met numerous motorcyclists who were returning from a Harley Davidson rally somewhere in Lower Michigan.

When you look at the pictures you will notice that I managed to ride from sun rise to sunset on this day. With many conversations, a relaxing swim in Lake Milakokia and an impromptu snooze I ended up covering just about the planned daily distance after all.

Some grazing horses.
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The setting sun.
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