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.