Journal entry – 26 June 2015, Fri

Journal entries are just that – the digital copy of my hand-written entries in my journal. If you aren’t interested in the daily details of our adventure, feel free to skip on to the next “regular” post.

Lazy morning in the RV. Taking care of house-keeping. Ashley reorganized some cabinets, now that we’ve been living in here full time. I entered all of our receipts to see how our expenses are running.

Calling for rain on Sunday, so tomorrow’s “kayak the sea caves” day. Looked at options and made a reservation. Booked our spot for 2 more nights. We’ll celebrate tomorrow and travel during Sunday’s rain.

Head out for a 55 mile bike ride. Route we found from map of local bike rides is a 52 mile loop, through the forest with good roads. It doesn’t take long for our first disappointment along the ride. Just on the other side of town we run into construction: “grooved pavement”. That will put your hands to sleep quickly on road bikes! This lasted for a few miles until we turned off the main road.

  
Followed street signs until realizing we were on the wrong road. Glance at the map and take a turn at the next intersection – gravel road! So we go back to the last intersection that we know is correct, 5 miles back. Fortuntely it’s either flat or downhill! Take the third and final option at the intersection – still the wrong road name but gets us out where we expected to be.

We ride on to the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center to top off water and hit the head. A woman was giving out samples of locally made cheese. It was delicious! I had to go back for some seconds.

She also dispensed some knowledge about our route – road construction ahead. Which apparently means they cover the road in gravel. Unfortunately, our road bikes are horrible in gravel. Just at the beginning of the gravel, though, is a trails-from-rails path. Still sand and gravel and mostly used by ATV and snowmobiles, but at least we would bypass a hill and there wouldn’t be any cars.

We head on and follow her directions. We are paused on the road, debating if we remember them correctly when she catches up with us. We’re at the right place. She turns left toward home and we head right.

This trail is much better than the road, but it’s still horrible. Too sandy to ride on. Takes a lot of energy too move forward. We end up walking for most of it. Finally we come to a paved road, only for it to have a name, while our map has road numbers. We continue on a few more miles (at least 5 miles we walked on this trail).

The next intersection is also blacktop and has a number, but it’s the wrong one. We should have turned at the last one! The map shows that they intersect and we don’t want to walk back down the gravel sand trail again so we head on.

  

The trail turns to packed sand/gravel. We press on. It turns to loose sand – unbikeable. we hike on. I can see that look in Ashley’s eyes as we head further into wilderness. The contemplation of which branch will make the best spear, either to kill me for bringing her out here or for protection against bears.

After an eternity we come to a blacktop road. Checking the phone’s GPS confirms that we’ve finally reached the proper route. 42 miles down, only half of the original 52 remain! The blacktop makes a huge difference, we feel like we’re flying after a few hours of walking through the sand.

   
Unfortunately, we’re low on water. I’ve got a few drinks left and Ashley’s out. We know we can ride the remaining 12ish miles after we finish mine.

It’s past supper time and past time left to make something. We agree to stop at Sauce, a burger and shake joint for a meal on the way home. This thought keeps us moving and we were going to eat out supper tomorrow anyway so we just moved it up a day.

 
We pull back into town, only a couple of blocks from Sauce. Are they still open? Whew! 45 more minutes! Everything looks so delicious! What shall we choose?

I settle on 1/2 lb Portabella Swiss burger. Oh so delicious! Homemade buns and we split the house chips. Ashley gets a 1/3 lb with guacamole and pico de gallo. We top it off with a shared cookies-n-cream shake.

  
We enjoyed a delightful chat with Harry, who we assume owns Sauce. His son was running the kitchen. He loved the idea of our trip and we discussed traveling and different places to visit.

Energized and refuelled we hop back on our bikes and pedal the last couple of miles back to our RV for showers and some tea before bed. 69.14 miles complete for the day!

  
The day started off so well and then seemed to get worse as it went on. We made it without getting mad at each other, hit personal records for mileage, and it all ended on a good note with a delicious meal. Over all, it ended up being a good day!