T1 Day 43 (Keelin)

 Day 43: 7/19/2023

Manistique, MI to Saint Ignase, MI


Liz and Kayla seemed to sleep better than me last night since I was woken up at 3:30 in the morning to the family at the campsite next door leaving for their morning fishing trip. The added anxiety came from the fact that I initially thought they were strangers stealing our bikes. We ran into Andre again in the morning and he was keen to take a photo and a selfie for his instagram… he also wanted to send us the photos through direct message but didn’t know how to work the app. He handed Liz his phone and said can you show me… Liz was so prepared to help out except for the fact that all the words on the screen were in german !!! They used Andres german skills and Liz’s instagram navigating as a joint effort to send the photos, and it worked!! 

We then started biking… on route 2 all day today. We knew it was going to be one of those head down and pedal days so we decided to try and give ourselves 15 mile pick-me-ups. We stopped at many, many different “yooper” (nickname for people from the Michigan U.P.) stores that were all very quaint and slightly odd. We got some ice pops, some hot pasties (a michigan specialty), and met other cyclists that were also touring!!! We stopped and chatted with the other cyclists, a man and a woman who were on gravel bikes with much wider tires than ours, for quite a bit of time. The man had done the northern tier before when he was younger and they had very cool set ups on their bikes- they were just doing the ride around lake Michigan. We also saw some cyclists traveling in the other direction but they didn’t stop to chat. Our final stop included a very, very extended conversation with a man who misunderstood our route as going down the eastern side of Michigan… not of LAKE Michigan. He proceeded to tell us everything we needed to know about every town along the lower mitten of the state. Without a map in front of me it took me too long into the conversation before I realized the miscommunication and I didn’t have it in me to correct it… he was just so excited. The silver lining of the ride was that we were along some very pretty beaches and dunes of lake Michigan and we really got to appreciate the lakes MASSIVE size. When we got into Saint Ignace it was not looking great weather wise… we knew we were going to get rained on. Anyway, we decided to stop and buy our ferry ticket to Mackinac Island before hitting the campsite. While we were in the ticket office a couple asked us about our trip and we’re so astonished by our resilience and dedication that they gave us $20 for lunch tomorrow !!! I love kind strangers ! We ended up beating the rain back to camp and cooked dinner only to find out that we ran out of fuel….. currently brainstorming ideas for non stove needing dinners for tomorrow so we’ll get back to you on that one. Good thing we already planned to get breakfast on the island tomorrow!! We got our tents up just in time for the rain and with an early wake up call of 5:45 tomorrow i’m drifting off to bed with the sound of rain on my tent.

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