After leaving our hosts, we stopped at the Gaylord Farmers Market, a covered block just off Main, and picked up some apples. Then, we stopped at the Big Bear Deli (photo above) to catch up on email, as we didn’t have WiFi available overnight. Following the railroad tracks north, we picked up the North Central Trail, part of over 1000 miles of trails in Michigan.

The trail proved to be more a snowmobile trail than a bicycle touring trail: the “packed crushed limestone” surface had apparently been recently prepped for the winter season with a fresh application of unpacked material, which turned out to act very much like loose gravel, forcing us to pedal downhill with our heavy trailer and small wheels, and to dismount at nearly every road and driveway crossing for the next 30 miles.

We ate lunch at the Thirsty Sturgeon, just off the trail near Wolverine, and then started uphill again toward Indian River. By this time we realized we were severely overloaded and began drafting alternate plans.

Arriving in Indian River, we found the road to our hosts for the evening, John and Dorothy.  A series of steep hills lay ahead.  Dorothy found us on the road and led us downhill and down a long dirt lane to their wonderful beach home on Burt Lake.  After an enjoyable evening visiting with an amazing couple–who, of similar age, still participates in marathons and bike events far beyond our capabilities at any age–we retired to guest quarters above the detached garage.

The next morning, we were treated to a breakfast of yogurt and pancakes with walnuts and blueberries, and conversation, finally saying our goodbyes and heading off for the next day’s ventures. Thanks, Dorothy and John, for a wonderful visit.

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.

July and August are typically high season for cyclists. This year, we got a number of Trans-America riders headed back from the Traditional front-wheel dip in the Pacific to Seattle to fly home. And, as always, the popular north-to-south crowd on the Pacific Coast route from Vancouver or Seattle to San Francisco or Imperial Beach: a surprising number came via Vancouver Island rather than the Bellingham-Whidbey Island route. This year we had our first Olympic Peninsula Loop riders.  Again, a large number of Europeans: Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium again in this second half of the season, along with Canadians and Americans.

As of 27 August, the total guest count for the year stands at 44 cyclists, including 8-month-old Leo, but not 7-year-old canine Kona, who ran uphill beside Jo’s bike, but rode downhill in her own B.O.B. trailer.  This brings our total guest count for the three years we have been hosting Warm Showers members to 75, who have arrived singly, in pairs, separately, and in groups.  Cyclists have ranged in age from 8 months to mid-70s and have come from 10 different countries.   We’ve had to turn away quite a few more when we have been traveling ourselves or had the house in the midst of remodeling and didn’t have a warm shower to share.  As of now, we are unavailable until at least mid-October while we go in search of Warm Showers hosts in the mid-west on our own bicycle tour.

In our last article on bicycling, we left off with a crash and subsequent recovery downtime.  Since June, we have been fairly actively training for our upcoming September self-supported tour, having accumulated a total of 550 miles of riding, mostly on rail-trails, which are much more pleasant than riding with traffic on the highways.  The rail-trails also have less dramatic grades than the–as one of our Warm Showers guests commented– “comically steep” hill on which our house sits, so we have avoided riding from home.

Again, we have made use of our new (this season) GoPro3 camera, which is usually mounted on the front accessory mount, and, when we have towed it, on the rear of the trailer.  As with any skill, the editing is getting better, though the sequences are often much too long, judging from other more professional videos on the web.

Riding the Chehalis-Western Trail from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

One of our favorite rides is the Chehalis-Western Trail, particularly the southern segment between the junction with the Olympia-Woodland Trail and the Yelm-Tenino Trail. The above was early June, when the scotch broom was in full bloom.

Yelm-Tenino Trail from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We also ride the Yelm-Tenino Trail: sometimes to Rainier, where there is a great drive-in coffee and pizza shop where they roast their own coffee; it is right on the trail, and sometimes on to Yelm, the eastern terminus of the trail.

Trucks – Porter to Elma Ride from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

For a change, to get used to riding on the roads, and to check out the segment of the Adventure Cycling Pacific Coast Trail south from Elma, we drove to Elma and rode south. It was a rainy day, so we only rode as far as Porter and back. We discovered the road, which promised to be a quiet, scenic ride on the opposite side of the Chehalis River from U.S. Highway 12, was also heavily used by tandem gravel trucks and logging trucks. The version above has the native sound track for full effect of passing trucks.

Tenino from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Back on the trails, we headed to Tenino, on the western half of the Yelm-Tenino trail, to check out the Saturday Market at Tenino. On the way back, we were entertained by a full simulated battle at the Society for Creative Anachronism’s encampment at the Equestrian Center, through which the C-W trail passes.

WhitehornPoint from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

In mid-June, we attended the Association of Northwest Weaving Guilds’ conference in Bellingham. We arrived early and stayed in Birch Bay, 40Km north of Bellingham, where we enjoyed some rides around the bay and up the headlands on either side.

RidetheRain from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Some rain can’t be avoided. This was a relatively short ride during the conference, and on a day when vacationer traffic picked up quite a bit.

semiahmoo from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Our first day out on Birch Bay, we traveled north to Semiahmoo Point, rewarded by a very fast steep downhill. In an attempt to avoid the slow, steep uphill, we continued along the beach to the east, only to find the trail ended below a housing area. Pushing/lifting the bike up between the houses, we found ourselves in a gated community and had to lift/carry the bike around the landscaping to bypass the gate.

Foothills Trail from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Our next rail-trail outing was to Puyallup, to ride the Foothills Trail, 15 miles up the Carbon River and South Prairie Creek. On clear days, Mount Rainier dominates the view ahead on the first half of the trail to Orting, but clear days also cause the mountain to generate its own weather, so we only saw glimpses of the slopes.

I-5 Trail from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

The I-5 Trail in Olympia runs parallel to the Olympia-Woodland Trail, connecting downtown with St. Martin’s College in Lacey. For us, it connects the two halves of the Chehalis-Western Trail, so we use it when headed north to Woodard Bay. On this ride, we also continued east on the Oly-Woodland trail to Woodland Park. However, the trail through Lacey becomes more of a pedestrian sidewalk around the many traffic circles, so was not as rewarding as most trails.

Bike to Ronan from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

A business and family trip to Montana in early July gave us the opportunity to ride some trails we had missed or didn’t exist when we lived in Montana. The above is the US93 trail into Ronan, through Pablo, starting from our cabin halfway between Polson and Pablo, with a return on the old US 93, now a quiet country road serving a few ranches and the Ronan airport.

Polson Bike Trail from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Again, starting from our cabin in the Mission Mountains, we rode the rail-trail to downtown Polson and back.

bitterroot from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Back in the Bitterroot Valley to work, we rode the US 93 bike trail in two sessions, a short ride south from Victor to Woodside Crossing and return, and a long ride the next day from the Florence Bridge to Victor and back, both segments of the trail completed since our move.

Whats ItTahuya from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Back home, we decided we needed to train on roads with more rolling hills than the gentle grades the rail trails provide, so we chose the North Shore of Hood Canal, which, though well-traveled by residents and workmen, was relatively low traffic and, for a beach ride, had a lot of climbing.

ZigZag from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Our old favorite, the Chehalis-Western Trail. This segment is an area where the old rail bed joins a still-active railway, so the trail angles around nearby properties and follows the more rolling terrain beside the tracks.

Running the Gap from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

The problem with the Chehalis-Western Trail is that it is in three segments, separated by Pacific Avenue and the Burlington-Northern rail line. This short film demonstrates the transition onto Rainier Avenue to run under the active rail line. The trail also then follows beside the rail line on a dirt track for 200 meters before resuming the northerly paved rail-trail to the junction with the Olympia-Woodland trail.

Deschutes from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Earlier in the season, the C-W Trail was broken in another spot, where it had been washed out along a bend in the Deschutes River. This section was repaved in July, so we celebrate with a full-speed pass through an area we had dismounted and pushed over loose gravel on previous runs.

Tahuya Redux from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

We again repeated the North Shore run, with some additional variations through beach communities on the return trip. This clip also shows our start-end point at beautiful Belfair State Park.

Millersylvania Fast Track from Larye Parkins on Vimeo.

Our final training goal before kicking off our fall tour was to take a “Bike Overnight” trip with full camping gear to make sure everthing was working and ready. Because of burning restrictions, we couldn’t test our makeshift soda-can alcohol stove that we plan to construct “on the road” as a necessary accommodation to Homeland Security and airline rules, but everything else worked: but, we did discover a bad bearing in the trailer, and are trying to locate a replacement before leaving.

We plan to ride at least a few short rides before departing, just to keep in shape: we rode a short, 15Km loop around the Olympia Airport before a Sunday meeting in Tumwater. We will also need to pack our Bike Friday “Q” in its travel cases/trailer a few days before departure to even out the weight distribution to the 22.7Kg limit that makes the difference between $60 baggage fee and $300 baggage fee. We may even break out the Santana for final rides a day or two before departure.