Day 8: Charlevoix to Lake City

This was the day we had been dreading. When it became clear to us that we had too many miles and too few days, we decided that we would need to do one big day of 90+ miles in order to stay on schedule. For some reason, Day 8 was chosen, even though we should have known that it would have the biggest hills of the trip.

This day had it all: monumental hills, including a two-mile whopper out of the Torch Lake basin, uncertainty about which roads to take (we didn't quite get lost, but I felt at times that we were riding in circles), mechanical failure (my Panaracer Pasela rear tire developed a near-catastrophic bulge in its sidewall--I was a few miles from a blowout, which would have been, uh, unpleasant on one of the big descents). It also had a stiff tailwind (thank goodness) and an absolutely lovely stretch of state highway (M-66) at the end of the day.

We thrashed around the Torch Lake area all morning, huffing up several pretty good hills, finally getting to Torch Lake's eastern shore with its flat (and quite lovely) riding. We were feeling encouraged by this flat riding, thinking that maybe we were done with the worst of the hills, when the two-mile beast hit. It just went on and on. Every time we thought we were near the top, another sign appeared warning of a curving (i.e. climbing) road.

We were really demoralized at the top of this hill. It was mid-afternoon and we still had about 55 miles to go. We didn't have many more hills in us.

At this point, we gave up any pretense of seeing the scenery. We needed to cover miles on straight, flat roads, which meant state highways. So we reluctantly jumped on to M-72, the main road from I-75 in the center of the state to Traverse City, the largest city in the northwest.

But like US-2, M-72 had a good shoulder the whole way to Kalkaska, which came sooner than I expected. That doesn't happen very often.

After a large lunch at McDonald's in Kalkaska, we set off on another state highway, M-66. We had abandoned our goal of Mitchell State Park in Cadillac, which would have been 50 more miles (for a total of more than 100 miles for the day). Instead, we spotted on the map a city park in Lake City, just 30 miles away. (I say "just" 30 miles ironically, since 30 miles on a bike is an eternity.) But the road was straight and wide, the traffic was light, the scenery was quite lovely, and the tailwind was divine. This was actually a very nice bit of riding.

Lake City was cute, the campground was just the kind we like: in the middle of town, very basic sites, but with a nice shower. Jon's parents drove over from Frankfort (an hour and a half) and brought us dinner. Afterward, I walked to Dairy Queen and had a turtle sundae AND a milkshake. When you ride 80 miles, you can indulge yourself.