Sunday and Monday (Labor Day), we hunkered down at Shanty Creek, venturing out only to hike around the roads at the summit. Of course, Sunday was the day of a huge thunderstorm that blew water in under the tarp we put over the bike.

Monday we began to realize the folly of starting a bicycle tour at a ski resort and planned our packing for a Tuesday departure and chose a new route. Given the heat and hills of the ride out from Traverse City, we felt riding the 45 miles to Petosky on Tuesday and another 45 miles to Mackinaw City was stretching our ability a bit far. So, we planned an early departure (Tuesday instead of Friday), taking a route east to Gaylord to the North Central Trail, which, though quite a bit longer, allowed us three 35-mile days and a stay with Warm Showers hosts in Gaylord and Indian River.  This also allowed us to replan the rest of our route to include shorter days and more rest days.

Tuesday, we set off with a hard push up the steep hill from our unit to the Summit complex, followed by a long fast downhill in to Bellaire, where we obtained a state map and a county map, since our new route was off the ACA route.  We knew the rest of the day was one long climb, with a total of 3000 vertical feet of climbing.  What we didn’t know was that 2.5 miles of road in the middle was dirt, which in this part of the world means packed sand if you are lucky, and loose, freshly graded sand if you are not.  One leg of the dirt section was being graded, which meant a walk, during which we had a nice conversation with the grader driver about tandem touring.  Fortunately, the packed part was either downhill (Osland Road), or flat (Bundy Road).

Our first stop of the day was in Alba, about halfway to Gaylord, and past most of the elevation gain, if not the climbing.  Alba proved to be the typical food desert we often encounter in many regions of America where the nearest full-service grocery is 25 miles away, or 30 minutes by automobile.  Further on, we stopped at a gas station/convenience store looking for bananas, not finding any at Alba.  None here, either, but we learned that the next turn on our Google-designed cue sheet was a closed road.  We got directions to a better road, and excellent road that was not only smooth, but had little traffic and took us right into Gaylord, where we replenished supplies and found our hosts for the evening.

Joe and Jeannine were excellent hosts for our first time on the Warm Showers guest list, after having hosted 75 cyclists ourselves over the past three years.  We were treated to a tour of the Gaylord Elk Farm, with close encounters with most of the herd, closing in on us for handouts of apples picked near the park from a city tree.  We were served dinner on the porch of their delightful old house and invited to help prepare both dinner and breakfast, which featured fresh produce from the community share.

Joe had to go to work early, so Jeannine saw us off the next morning.

Our bike tour actually started at Day minus one, delivering the cat to the Just Cats Hotel, after which we loaded up the bike cases, camping gear, clothing duffle, and our carry-on electronics and personals and drove back to Olympia to our son’s house, where we are leaving our car.

Day 0 – 04:15am PDT: Up quietly and out the door in light rain to wait for the airport shuttle.  We arrived at Sea-Tac in plenty of time to run through the ever-changing rules and regulations of airport travel.  Since our bike breaks down into two suitcases of standard size, 48lb. each, and we compressed the camping gear to the 62-inch length-width-height, we paid the standard fee for two bags each–$120, total.  We even passed inspection with bag full of bike electronics, computer, solar panel, etc.

Plane changes in Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago left us a bit drained, subsisting on trail food and a coffee and yogurt from Starbucks.  Our bags came off the luggage track at Traverse City relatively unscathed, though obviously rifled through, and we took a taxi to our motel, arriving after 10:00pm EDT, almost 15 hours after arising.

Day1 – Traverse City (Acme) to Bellaire (Shanty Creek Resorts): We rousted our jet-lagged selves out of bed at 7:35am, close to my normal wakeup at 4:30am Pacific time, but late already for first ride day.  After the usual motel waffle and tiny yogurt cup breakfast, I rolled the bike cases into the parking lot and spread out the assembly blankets.

As we feared, TSA had had a field day rummaging through the bike parts.  Despite having strapped each half so the entire carefully-choreagraphed placement would not be disturbed, they had released the straps and sifted everything.  To my horror, the toothbrush case in which I keep spare spokes and the all-important SRAM dual-drive shift rods was opened and empty, with spokes and spoke nipples rolling around at the bottom of the case.  To my relief, I found the shift rod, undamaged, among them.  The rim brake return springs were unhinged, and spare screws that were in with the spokes were wedged in crannies in the case.

However, everything went together fairly well, with exception of the rear derailleur cable, which was too tight, portending shifting problems to follow.  A moment of panic ensued when I discovered the new trailer wheel bearing I had installed just before packing wasn’t seated completely, so the axle pin holes didn’t line up.  A few raps with a wrench, using the head of the axle bolt for a driver, seated it.  I completed the assembly just as the first drops of the morning downpour started, and moved the bike under the portico in front of the motel.

While the rain storm raged outside, we packed the trailers. Even after filling both and the dry bag for the top, our “street shoes” and now-empty clothing duffel were still left over, and got tucked under the cargo net on top, with the dry bag.  We wheeled the trailer out and checked out at exactly the checkout limit, 11:00.  The rain had stopped by then, and the heat and humidity built up quickly.

The motel was on a busy 4-lane highway, so we dismounted after circling the motel parking lot to check mechanicals, and pushed the 210-pound (95kg) rig across the highway to find no shoulder.  None. Traffic quickly backed up behind us for blocks and we ran down the road with the loaded bike to get to a driveway,  We dodged waves of traffic from driveway to driveway (no sidewalk, either) for 200 meters, then ran across all four lanes into a parking lot on the corner before the light changed.  We finally mounted up, but our ride was short as we hit the first of many steep hills, only a few meters from the intersection.

We mounted up after pushing 400 meters uphill, and found that the shifting was off: several mid-range gears weren’t usable due to the tight cable issue I noted during assembly;  this always takes endless fiddling to adjust out, and by now we were drenched in sweat from the heat, humidity, and hills, and severely behind schedule.

So the day went.  We followed the Adventure Cycling map for the most part, took an unmarked rail-trail, which ended in sand 15 meters from a busy highway where no one even slowed, forcing us again to run, since there was no place to mount up, pushing the bike across to the side road that would take us back to the bike route.

After riding for some time on no-shoulder roads, we ended up for a few miles on the highway, where there was a shoulder, until the next hill, where the shoulder became a passing lane, and where no one moved over, missing us by inches at 70mph (110kph).  A left turn off the highway found us dismounting and running with the bike yet again, since it was impossible to move into the turn lane across the high-speed traffic.

After a lunch stop at a large grocery north of Rapid City (a small village with a blinker light to mark the center of “town”), we saw the first sign to our resort, and, following the sign, unknowingly departed the ACA map, which is a narrow strip with the route down the center, so we were truly clueless, trying to match up turns and features.  Up a steep (walk a bit) hill, we soldiered on.  But, the uncertainty of our whereabouts and the heat and hills took their toll.  By the time we reached the turn off up the mountain to the resort, we had bonked, fighting leg cramps while pushing the bike the last 3 Km up the steep winding road.  Our unit, naturally, was down the other side, on an even steeper hill.

But, we were rewarded with a glowing sunset over the lake below, after we disassembled the trailer and wrestled the pieces and the bike up the stairs to our unit.  It had taken us seven hours to travel 34 miles (54Km), and eleven hours since we started assembling the bike. We ate a peanut butter sandwich, too tired to climb back up the hill to the restaurant.

Day 2: Bellaire: We hiked up the hill for breakfast, then later hiked up again to take the hotel shuttle to downtown Bellaire.  The town was filled with a group of 100 or more cyclists on a supported tour from Lansing to Mackinaw City (and possibly, beyond).  We wandered around the center of town, then hiked back toward the resort, stopping at the supermarket for supplies for the next few days before hopping the shuttle back up the mountain.  The next day or so will be spent planning a less-brutal route to Mackinaw City, and resting up for the hills to come.