Last Video!

I got the last two days done. I'd like to add that I had a fantastic time riding the Great Lakes with the team and I can't wait for our next adventure!

Day 8 - Newaygo, MI to HOME!

We actually got up and on the road by 8am, so apparently it is possible to get out early when we put our minds to it. We made a quick stop for breakfast and were rolling on the miles by 8:30am. The day was mostly just pushing through the 290 miles to get back home on time to turn my rental bike in. We took a few breaks here and there but not for anything scenic, just butt and lunch breaks. I decorated Fat Bob with some pretty flowers at one of the rest stops, but they promptly blew off as soon as we headed down the road. We made it to Dad's around 3pm and I unloaded my bike. Then we headed to the public beach in Port Clinton to dip our fingers in Lake Erie, our last of the five lakes. Done! We then headed to the Sandusky Harley dealer to turn in "Fat Bob". Steve had to pull me off the bike, I just didn't want to say goodbye :( I put a total of 2,463 miles on FB, so that was the total loop around the lakes. Dad put about 50 more miles getting to and from the dealer, and Steve put on about 750 more miles driving to/from Ohio from Illinois. What a great trip we had!
Click here for pictures from our last day of riding.

Videos from Days 3 &4 and 5 & 6

Steve had these videos ready a while ago (he did one while doing his laundry at 7am at a St. Ignace laundromat) but we never had good enough connections to get them uploaded. Here you go!
Day 3 & 4

Day 5 & 6

Day 7 - St. Ignace, MI to Newaygo, MI

For some reason no matter how early we wake up and get moving, it seems like we don't get on the road until around 10 or 11am. This morning was no exception. We were all showered and ready by 9:30, but then the boys decided to try and fix Dad's speedometer which has been broken this whole trip. After fiddling with that we headed in to town for gas and a stop at the local beach so we could dip our fingers in Lake Huron. We finally made it out of town around 10:45, geesh. Our first big adventure was right outside of St. Ignace...crossing the Mackinac Bridge, which is the third longest suspension bridge in the US. Just our luck that the outside, paved lane was closed for construction for a good strtech so we had to ride the inside lane which is steel grating. That's a very wobbly experience on two wheels but we made it across okay. We proceded to cruise the lower peninsula of Michigan, following the Lake Michigan coast line. We drove through lots of little resort towns that were packed with people enjoying the summer weather. It was sunny and warm all day today, which was a pleasant surprise because the weather channel had predicted thunder storms. It's nice when they're wrong in our favor :) We passed through several national forests on our tour, including the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Our route provided lots of twisties for us, much more than the rest of our trip so far. "Fat Bob" and I had a great time winding through the trees...weeee! I'm getting pretty attached to the ol' bike, it's going to stink to turn it in tomorrow :( We made a stop at the Point Betsie Light House for a butt break and photo opportunity. We took our 4th lake picture, dipping our fingers in a much-cleaner-than-yesterday Lake Michigan. Only one more to go, Lake Erie, and we'll do that when we get back to Ohio tomorrow. After our break at the beach we started heading inland through the Manistee Nat'l Forest and we saw several wild turkeys hanging out on the side of the road. We finally made it in to Newaygo, our stopping point for the day after putting 320 miles on the bikes. We had a great ride in the sunshine and tomorrow we head home to Ohio to finish off our trip.
Click here for pics from today.

By the way, Steve has two videos completed and ready to post, but we haven't had a strong enough wi-fi connection to get them uploaded. We should be able to get them up tomorrow once we get to Dad's.

Notes from the Old Guy

Just wanted to say that it has been a lot of fun trying to keep up with the young-uns.
Mostly just follow along and pose for pictures--great way to spend a week.

Day 6 - Ironwood, MI to St. Ignace, MI

We woke up to a perfect morning on Lake Superior. We were all so comfortable in the cabin and it provided a great night's sleep. Thanks to Len and Lynn for their generosity in letting us stay there. We had our morning coffee on the deck and went down and checked out the beach as we puttered around and got ready for our day of riding. Once the bikes were all loaded up we headed down the road in to the town of Ironwood for breakfast at the Breakwater cafe. We took my laptop in with us since they had wi-fi and uploaded yesterday's posting while we ate. Side note: I bought this laptop case for the trip that was on clearance for $9.99. For that price my design options were limited so I opted for the pink case with white and green polka dots. For some reason the guys aren't willing to carry it around for me, I don't understand it ;-) Anyway, once we were done with breakfast we began putting some miles on the bikes. We rode through several national forests throughout the day and the roads were lined with trees and gently wound through the upper peninusla. For the first half of our day it was overcast and slightly chilly at times, but then the sun finally worked through as we headed East and the afternoon was very nice. We did encounter quite a bit of construction along our route today, apparently the upper peninsula is in need of repair.
Steve wanted to stop around Munising to try and snap a picture of the Pictured Rocks State Park, however when we pulled in to the local boat launch/park area, there was fog hanging over the water and we couldn't see across the bay. We waited around for a little bit while giving our butts a break but the fog never really lifted. We decided to take a picture of two rocks that Dad had been collecting and called it good. Our next stop was the Seney National Wildlife Refuge. The loop was 7 miles long so we thought we'd drive it and check it out. As soon as we started (and it was too late to turn around) we discovered that the road was gravel the entire way so it wasn't the most fun wildlife loop. We saw some trumpeter swans in one of the lakes and stopped at the bald eagle lookout but there were no eagles to be seen. Oh well. We continued on our way to St. Ignace and about 40 miles out, as I was leading us in, I had a freaky experience. I ran over a seagull who flew in front of me and couldn't quite figure out how to get out of the way fast enough. Dang, that was a bummer. I made Steve lead the rest of the way :( We stopped one more time for a rest and thought we'd dip our fingers in Lake Michigan, our newest lake on the tour. But when we walked down to the beach the water was pretty mucky and nasty looking so we decided to wait until tomorrow and try a different spot.
We made it to our motel around 8:30pm and got checked in. This place has theme rooms and Steve's is the coolest. It's the tree-house room and it's full of fake trees, the bed is made out of trees with leaves as the canopy and the tv is mounted up in the branches at the foot of the bed. Difficult to explain, but I'll try and take pictures tomorrow before we leave. We headed in to town for dinner at a recommended place and it was a good little family diner with a nice view of Lake Huron. Now we're done for the day and looking forward to tomorrow, which will be driving down along the shores of Lake Michigan, weather permitting. It seems we might run in to more rain but we're hoping the weather people are wrong.
Click here for pictures from today.

Day 5 - Thunder Bay, Ontario to Ironwood, MI

We woke up this morning to a slight drizzle, but by the time we were ready to roll it had cleared up and the rest of our day was rain free. We hit the road and made a visit to the Thunder Bay Harley Davidson dealer to see if there were any goodies we might need and to pick up a shirt for a friend in Ohio. Steve found a pirate-like "do-rag" to go with the pirate shirt he was wearing and we figured that was a good tribute to that cute little boy on the ferry :) After shopping, we rode about 30 miles down the road to the US/Canadian border and entered the United States...home sweet home. No more converting kilometers and liters to miles and gallons. Woohoo! We also noticed that the Moose Danger signs changed to Deer Danger signs and several of them had red rudolph noses, he he he. So we spent the rest of our day riding down through Minnesota along Lake Superior. We stopped for some nice overlook viewpoints and to check out the Split Rock Lighthouse which was pretty cool. We climbed up to the top and got to see the huge light, and we also heard them blow the two big fog horns. We zipped down to Duluth, which had some beautiful, huge houses, and then rounded the corner of the lake and headed East in to Wisconsin. Steve found this nice route that took us up by the Apostle Islands which was a real treat. The sun came out for the entire ride and we had the road pretty much to ourselves, though we did have to share it with several deer. We stopped for a break in Bayfield, a small harbor town that has a ferry that runs people out to one of the Apostle Islands. At that point we only had a few more hours of sunlight, so we headed down the road to Ashland for some dinner before continuing on to the cabin. We had been given good directions and Steve had the address in "Sally", his gps unit, but it was tricky trying to read mailboxes and addresses at dusk on a forest lined road. Steve found it though, and we are all settled in. What a beautiful place it is, too. Right on Lake Superior and all the comforts of home. I have one sunset picture from the deck but that's all I could get before the sun went down. Alas, no wi-fi connections in the area as we suspected. So you'll be reading this update a day late.

Update: The next morning we just found wi-fi at our breakfast spot, the Breakwater Cafe. Yippee! Click here for pictures from the day.

Update #2 - The eldest biker would like to give a shout out to Kris, whom we bought the shirt for, and Sandy (his lovely wife) and Denise, who are both light house fans.