Ski Country, Michigan

Day 41: Ironwood to Bruce Crossing, MI--54 miles

Finally an available computer! Yeah! It has been hard to find an open library with the holiday, etc. We'll try again with the pictures later tonight as long as the computer is available... So here goes---

Today, we had too much eating and just the right amount of cycling! We had a HUGE breakfast, a HUGER (is that a word?) lunch, and a big dinner. Shame on us--and we were sluggish from all that fiber-free food!

It was a cold and very overcast day, but we were happy to have no headwind. The temperature has been just perfect in the U.P. and we're glad we chose this route. The more southern routes are flooded and if we had started later, we'd probably be in the heat wave that's chasing us across the country.

Our first stop was in Wakefield at the visitor's center. We tried to plan our trip across the UP, and enjoyed looking at all the potential campgrounds and other places to stay. I had my picture taken with the largest wooden statue of an Indian Head I have ever seen, and then we departed from Rt. 2 and headed up Rt. 28. We decided to make our days through the U.P. a bit shorter because we were wearing ourselves out--the past 2 days had been long and difficult. So we'll eliminate the day off and just ride shorter rides until we get to Canada, eh?

We also lost an hour today--because we entered Eastern Time Zone (about 30 miles into the middle of the state)!!! Yeah! Michigan doesn't go by those norms of changing the whole state at once. So the northern part of the U.P. is on Eastern time and the southern part is on Central time. Since the whole U.P. is probably less than 100 miles from north to south, this can cause some confusion! Lucky for us, i think we'll just be staying on Eastern time until we hit the Atlantic Ocean...

It was a VERY pleasant cycling day and we even had some downhills! We passed by at least 5 of the Michigan Ski areas. These are pretty small areas, but bigger than our old East Coast haunt of Wisp, MD. Cross-country skiing is also wildly popular here--and considering all the snow they get from Lake Superior, I can see why. They also have lots of snowmobile and ATV tracks all over the place.

We got to Bruce Crossing around 3:30 and checked into the only hotel in town. The people were very nice, but the room was a little beat up. It looked like a family of 5 had a pretty wild party in there! Although the town was small, we found things to occupy our time.

We're seeing some difference in the folks here in Michigan--a bit more cynical and "worldly," I guess I would say. They expect that you'll stay in your shoulder if you're cycling and they're driving. In fact, they don't slow down at ALL! Sometimes when the shoulder is wide, that's just fine. At other times when we have a narrow shoulder, it's a problem. I actually went off the shoulder into the gravel twice today because a LARGE vehicle (one bus and one big truck) came too close and blew me off track. Better to go to the gravel than into the road...

In another example, we went to the local laundromat to do our twice-weekly load of laundry. When we got there, there was no dispenser for detergent. David walked to the local store and only found huge containers of detergent. When he asked in the bar (yes, bar) attached to the laundromat, they basically said "too bad for you--there's no soap." He was a little disgusted, until we decided to go back to our hotel and bum some soap from them. After all, they probably do laundry every day! So they gave him a styrofoam cup with some detergent and all was well!

We had dinner at our hotel (Tupplo's) and it was quite good. We have been trying the local fish since we're so close to Lake Superior, and we had walleye which was perfectly prepared. Of course, no veggies, but at least the fish was great. We also found a little art gallery that was open (I LOVE getting into town before 5:00!) and bought a bunch of Christmas presents as well as a rug for our house! Another fun box to open when we get home...

We hit the sack early (although we weren't very tired because we changed time zones) to try and get an early start the next day.