Monday, July 27, 2009. Slight west wind and a mix of all weather types.
- Start: Champion, Van Riper State Park
- ATW: Clarksburg, Greenwood, Ishpeming, Negaunee, Princeton
- End: Gwinn, MI
- Day Miles: 50-something Ride Time: Total Trip Miles:
We're currently sitting in a house listening to a torrential downpour raging outside. We connected with another warmshowers host and just in time! We'll update the blog more as we sit here eating dinner. The following picture is a shot of us using the couple of laptops available.
Recap of the day:
Another late morning with a start at 11:00am. We woke late, packed slow, wrote in journals and talked more. When we tired of chasing squirrels away from our food paniers we tried to ride out of the park but talked more. "Are we ever going to make it today?" That was just the beginning.
We were told that it was "all down hill" to Ishpeming. Well, not really. Some downhills, but not all. A stop at the grocery with a stocked up on fruit, veg, cheese and hummus had us lacking only a good bread to round out the meal. We were given directions to the Huron Mountain Bakery in town and we spent a good hour eating delectable treats and more talking. We ended up telling our story three times while in the shop!
Two local ladies gave us directions to a paved bike trail into Negaunee with the explination that Ishpeming meant "high land" or "heaven" while Negaunee meant "low land" or... where were they sending us? A bike path into...
The bike path was lovely but the directions once in Negaunee were muddled. We saw a couple of youths in a door way who called out an appreciation to us about our bike. We swung back around for directions and set out down to Gwinn.
Riding 40 miles out of Wakefield on a rest day resulted in a little confusion with our warmshowers host. I'd left a message saying we were a day ahead of schedule but when I called for exact directions everything was suddenly confusing and a bad phone connection didn't help. There was a birthday (would we get cake?) and they had plans for the night but we were welcome to stay all the same. With directions in hand we found we'd gone a long way around to get to her house because she didn't actually live in Gwinn but on the old airforce base north east of town. At least the trip down 35 was downhill on all the hard parts.
Leaving the house a few miles west of Gwinn that we'd stopped in for borrowing a phone Dave's left hamstring had a sudden strain. He streatched and we continued on but the pain came back intermitantly. Since it's a two engine bike Heather pedaled slowly on the straight aways, Dave assisted on any uphills and we both coasted every chance we could. We'd been watching a narrow band of dark clouds spanning from west to east. They didn't look too friednly and for spite they started raining on us just before we got to our host's house.
We sheltered the bike and talked for a while. They dashed off to the casino to celebrate her son's 21st birthday and we sat around listenting to the rain pound outside thankful to have a night inside.
