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.

Day 4 - Wawa, Ontario to Thunder Bay, Ontario

Well, it just doesn't seem to be one of our trips without some rain. We began the day by checking the weather online and watching this large patch of rain going across Lake Superior on the satellite map. We assumed that we would be getting wet at some point today and we were right. We popped in to downtown Wawa for some breakfast and a picture of the big goose (yep, Aunt Patti, it's still there!). Then we headed on down the road to see what was in store for us. We made it almost half way, to Marathon, when it just started misting. We decided to stop for some lunch and wait out the clouds for a bit. After all, the satellite map made it look like it was maybe an hour or two before it would pass. So we ate...then we waited....and waited a little more because it kept raining. I didn't have any service on my blackberry and there was no wi-fi in the area so we couldn't check the weather maps. We wandered over to a small strip mall to see what was in there while we waited. The local newspaper had an office (two desks) in the mall so I popped in and asked the woman there if she would mind checking the weather for us. She kindly obliged and it looked like the cloud was just over us, inching it's way past. We knew we'd have to don our rain suits and I remembered the last time I rode in the pouring rain and my gloves were like sponges. So I went in to the grocery store in the mall and bought some lovely blue, rubber dish gloves to wear. Um, the guys were laughing at me quite a bit and I think all the bikers I waved at on the road probably wondered what the heck I was wearing too :) After waiting almost two hours for the rain to clear, it actually started raining harder so we decided to just boogie down the road and see if we could clear it. On went our rain suits and off we went. Once out of Marathon, we only had about 20 minutes or so of heavy rain and then it dried up. It was still foggy, very windy and quite cold for the rest of the drive though. We stopped at a couple of viewpoints for breaks (and to warm up) and boy, Lake Superior was really choppy and stormy looking. It made me think about all the shipwrecks out there on these lakes. Yikes! So aside from the chilly and damp weather, the ride to Thunder Bay was outstanding. Beautiful scenery, the road curving in and out of the rocky bluffs with fabulous Lake Superior views coming and going as the road wound around the coast line. We made it to our motel around 8pm and ordered pizza delivered to our room. After a cold day of riding we didn't feel like going back out. Now the fog has rolled in off the lake and visibility is low. Tomorrow's forecast looks pretty good for our ride down through Minnesota, no rain and Duluth is saying low 80's. That sounds nice after today.
You can click here for pictures from today. There aren't a lot of them due to the weather.
Tomorrow night we stay at a friend's cabin and we're pretty sure there isn't going to be wi-fi there, so we might not be posting again on our normal schedule. We'll check in again when we can.

Day 3 - Espanola, Ontario to Wawa, Ontario

Well, we thought we were getting a late start to our day by getting out around 9:30am this morning. Boy were we wrong, our start was MUCH later than that. There was a couple on motorcycles staying at our motel and we were all chit chatting as we packed up our gear. As we hopped on our bikes and started to pull out, the woman noticed that Steve's back tire was really flat. Crap. Thankfully they had an air compressor with them so we pumped up his tire and headed in to town to the Yamaha dealer to see if they could fix it. We had to wait for an hour before they could even look at it, so we went across the street for some breakfast. When we headed back they took his bike in and found a nail in his tire. Three hours, several silly pictures in the parking lot, and $100 bucks later we were finally able to start our day of riding. It was 1pm when we hit the road and headed out of Espanola.
The drive in to Sault Ste Marie, our half way point for the day, had a lot of traffic and construction with little to no views of the lake. It was overcast the entire way so we pushed through, just wanting to get some miles under our belts after our delayed start. We stopped in Sault Ste Marie for lunch and gas and then hopped back on the bikes for the second part of our day. This section was the one everyone told us was so beautiful and they were definitely right. We drove through a National Park (Provincial Park, actually) and it was full of Evergreens, rocky cliffs, bluffs, rivers and LOTS of views of the lake. The road had sweeping curves that wound in and out of the hills and there wasn't much traffic at all. The only bummer to the drive was that it was so late in the afternoon and we were racing the sunset to try and get to our hotel before it was dark. There were Moose crossing signs everywhere and we were scanning the road sides as we cruised, hoping to avoid any incidents. We pulled over for some scenic spots and to dip our fingers in Lake Huron, and then once to put on more clothes, gloves, etc. as it was getting chilly as the road fell more in to the shadows.
We made it to our stop around 8:45pm, with a little bit of light left. We had booked a 2 bedroom cabin for us all to share and it's quite cute. We unloaded our bikes and walked over to the on site restaurant for some dinner. Now we're back, all cozy in our cabin and tucked in for the evening.
We put 285 miles on the bikes today, not bad for that late start we had. You can click here for pictures from today.

More tomorrow!

Day 1 & 2 Video

Steve was able to get some video edited from our first two days. No music soundtrack though, we discovered that we have no way to get music from our mp3 players on to the laptop. We're working on that one....

In the mean time, here you go )

Day 2 - Hamilton, Ontario to Espanola, Ontario

Another great day! We rode 255 miles and didn't see a drop of rain. It was mostly overcast with some sun breaks and pleasant temps in the low 70's. We began with a few miles of highway before we finally hit two lane roads for the remainder of our ride. We veered off the main drag just before Toronto and headed north up the Bruce Peninsula to catch the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry in Tobermory. The drive was all rolling countryside and small towns with lots of beautifully landscaped homes and farms all the way. The roadside was filled with tall reed grasses, little purple flowers and Queen Anne's Lace. A unique feature to the area seemed to be these older farm houses that were built out of some local stone and they were just lovely. Some were small, some were quite large but they all were so well maintained and so charming. A lot of these places had neat old hand stacked wooden fences too. We don't have pictures of any of the really impressive homes, but we caught one picture of a stone house that happened to be at an intersection, which will give you a taste. As we got further up the peninsula, you could feel the lake wind blowing across the land and it was hitting us from the side, pushing us around a little bit.
We rolled in to Tobermory right on schedule for our ferry reservations. We got in line, parked our bikes and grabbed a quick bite before they started loading the boat. Steve has some cool video of getting on and off the ferry that we'll upload when we get a chance. The crossing was 1-1/2 hours, during which we took pictures and relaxed in the lounge area. As we set out across the lake, Dad and Steve were standing out on the observation deck looking over the railing when Steve said he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He looked down and there was this young, probably four year old boy just standing there staring up at them with this wide-eyed look. They both had their "do-rags" on from riding which must have prompted this cute little guy to ask them, "Are you pirates?" Steve kindly told him no, he wasn't. The boys' Dad said if he had said he was, he probably would have asked for his autograph. Very cute indeed :)
The ferry dropped us off on Manitoulin Island and we had a nice drive across it as we headed north to Espanola, our stopping place for the night. The last 30 miles or so we began to go through some fabulous curvy, hilly, and very rocky terrain. I'm going to have to research what kind of stone and rock is in this area because it changed colors as we drove. Some of it was light, then it would turn more red...it was really interesting. It felt good to get some twisties in finally. "Fat Bob" handled them wonderfully and now I can't wait for more fun roads. Speaking of fun roads, we met these two women who were on motorcycles and in line behind us for the ferry. They told us that the route we're taking is really a nice ride and that the section between Sault St. Marie and WaWa is outstanding. That's tomorrow, I can hardly wait!
So we obviously made it to our hotel tonight, a cute little place just outside of town, set back from the road in a nice grove of trees. Again, pleasantly surprised to find they have wi-fi. Gotta love it!
You can click here for pictures from today.

We'll chat with you again tomorrow!

Day 1 - Port Clinton, OH to Hamilton, Ontario

Ohhh Ca-na-daaaa.....we made it! Today we rode 330 miles and it was all smooth sailing. We began by picking up my rental at the Harley dealer and as soon as I met "Fat Bob" I knew we were going to be great friends, even though I'm not a big fan of the "matte red" color. While I was getting my rental all sorted, Dad got to work installing a part on his bike to help with his "oh no, you'll have to push start me" starting problem. Once that was taken care of we hit the road. Today was mostly highway driving so the mileage went quickly. We went through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, zipping around the edges of Cleveland and Buffalo. We only encountered a few sprinkles through a mostly overcast day, so not too bad. When we arrived at Niagara Falls, the sun came out and we had a lovely, misty visit to the falls. We parked on Goat Island, which is in between the two sets of falls so we were able to walk to both sides for different viewpoints. The falls are so huge they have an enormous spray and even parking our bikes in the parking lot you could feel the mist. In fact, if you take the tour down to the caves under the falls they give you water shoes and ponchos to wear and the people still looked drenched when they came back up. Interesting though, they have these huge bins to recycle the shoes afterwards and they send them to the needy. After Niagara it was a short jaunt to the border where we lined up to cross in to Canada. While I was waiting in line, a woman from a car in the next line asked me what kind of bike I was riding because she thought it looked so cool. I told her it was the "Fat Bob" and she seemed smitten with it too. Me and my new friend are already turning heads :) So, after some pretty basic questioning by the border patrol we all three were ushered through to the Canadian side. Off we went for another 40 miles or so down Queen Elizabeth Way to get to our resting point for the night. We're staying in a small mom-n-pop motel, so we were pleasantly surprised to discover they have wi-fi! Nice! We checked in and then took a run down to Lake Ontario so we could dip our fingers in the water. (We've decided we need to physically touch each lake on this trip). One down, four to go. Then we found this great place for dinner, Jack Astors, and got ourselves some grub. The wait staff all had funny sayings on the backs of their t-shirts, my favorite being "I'll try being a better waitress if you try being smarter". Now we're back in our rooms winding down for the evening. All in all a great beginning and we're looking forward to tomorrow, which includes a ferry ride on the Chi-Cheemaun ferry across Lake Huron. You can click here to see pictures from today.

We'll try to check in again tomorrow...

Almost ready to roll....

Here we are again getting ready for our next adventure. This year finds us traveling around the Great Lakes, including a trek through Canada and routes through almost every state that borders them. We plan on taking 8 days to make the loop, riding about 300 miles per day. We will again have our "Steve-o-vision" video and plenty of pictures to share with all of you. We weren't as lucky to get wi-fi access in all of our stopping places though, so updates to the blog may not happen daily. We will do our best to keep it current.

We're all meeting up in Ohio this Friday and picking up my rental bike Saturday morning. Then we'll hit the road for our first day of riding. Fun!

Stay tuned for news from the road.....

**WARNING** I am smitten with my rental bike, the newly introduced "Fat Bob", so you will most likely be seeing LOTS of pictures of it. I will try to restrain myself.

FAT BOB!