Today's forecast: 90% chance of showers & thunderstorms. Doppler radar showed a huge system marching inexorably towards us. We all opened one eye from time to time last night in hopes of seeing lightning that would mean the system was going by fast, but no luck. It was raining lightly when we got up, and the chances were excellent that it would just keep getting worse. What to do?
Bruce expressed a preference for giving in & riding in the car ( give 'em an inch...) but took it very well when I said I would really like to ride at least until it got too bad. So we dug out our rain gear, figured out how best to send panniers in the back of the Baja, and rolled out onto the busy road. The cars and trucks were very polite. It only took about 20 minutes to reach the highway with the nice, big shoulder. It still wasn't raining very hard.
After about 15 miles, we stopped for a snack. It was hardly raining at all. I cleaned my glasses and things looked lots better. The highway was a busy one, running mostly along the shore of Lake Michigan. There were nice views but the traffic and the endless spray from all the trucks made it hard to look around.
Still, there was less and less rain all the time. I looked at the sky in all directions and simply could not find any dark, threatening clouds. And soon Bruce pointed out some ducks rushing through the grasses at the side of the road. Then we saw a family of turkeys. Then we saw something in the shoulder ahead of us. Could it be? Yes! Another touring cyclist. No! Two more touring cyclists on a tandem. We eventually caught up. They were carrying their gear; Aline & Jim had ours. So we talked for a while. They are a couple from New Mexico who are doing a route quite similar to ours, but they will go all the way to Maine, then turn south to visit family in Virginia. 5000 miles.
Soon after we met them we stopped for lunch. They joined us & we had a good time comparing notes. Today's cafe offered a beef pasty, which everyone else had. There was a sign by the inner door: We are not FAST. We are GOOD. For fast, go to Chicago...
It really was quite good.
Not long after lunch I saw some big birds in the grass. Sandhill cranes, the birds I have been watching for in the last three states. Two adults, two half-grown babies. They looked up as we stopped abruptly to stare. They were close enough that binoculars would have been pointless, but they showed no alarm. They just walked with great dignity into the nearby pines and gently disappeared.
Not much later, we realized we had a pretty good tailwind & we whizzed into Manistique.
Aline & Jim had just arrived & had discovered a state park for us all to visit. Kitch-iti-kipi, or The Big Spring. It's a large, perfectly clear spring. There is a great big raft attached to a cable that people can take from one side of the water to the other by turning a wheel. It has an opening in the middle like the ones on glass bottom boats. We could look down and get a glare-free look at the 45' deep water, the large trout that live in it, and the swirling sands that well up as the 10,000 gallons per minute of water surge in. We were all intrigued. Bruce & I would not have ridden the extra miles to see it. We are lucky to have our great support crew. There is so much to see in this country!
Bruce admitted he'd have felt pretty silly if he'd gotten here by car today.
Miles today: 55
Total miles so far: 2800
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