Paul's Touring Blog

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I don’t remember much about leaving Barnes county Park campground except that it was a routine morning, save for getting water from a pump well. We did make coffee and had some breakfast, broke camp, etc. We rode back to the Torch Lake Inn’s coffee shop for another cuppa and some WiFi. Three of our four potential warm showers host in Traverse City had turned us down. I tried the remaining one who had indicated he traveled for work and might not be available. To our luck, we got an almost immediate response from Pauly accepting our request. Made for an easier day just knowing where we were going to be staying.

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We got up early to avoid the coming 8 AM rain. We woke up at 6:30 and started breaking down the tent and got on our way into Petoskey around 7:40. The rain did start, but it was a light drizzle, though we did eventually don our rain jackets. 

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Got up to a dry tent again. Our favorite thing; well, my favorite thing. Made coffee. Did our nature calls, broke camp, and in headed into St Ignace. 

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Ahh, warmth. Woke up in a nice warm bed, made coffee with a coffee maker, got our yogurt out of the refrigerator and had a nice breakfast while catching up on the weather. A cool start, but 9 degrees warmer today and not dipping below 60 tonight. We set our sites on St. Ignace and either Lakeshore RV Campground or the KOA.

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It was so nice to wake up and be able to just stand up without unzipping the tent door and crawling outside. It was a cool morning and we got our jackets on and went through the tent door to the bathroom. Made some coffee and breakfast, and greeted Mike again as he came to work and thanked him for all his help and the gracious use of his tent. 

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Another good night of rest, especially after the exertion of yesterday’s Grand Island loop. We had breakfast at the motel — coffee, yogurt, & pastries, and took our time getting going for our first ride where our GPS units actually list climbs — one at 289 ft and a second at 105 ft. Nothing compared to what we’re used to, but we’ve been very spoiled by flat rides so far.

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We woke up not really knowing what we were going to do today except that we were staying in Munising another day. The weather was iffy. It had rained last night, but just a couple of showers vs. the thunderstorms that were predicted. Today, rain was predicted at 4 and again later at 7. We (well, I) had decided last night to try to avoid camping in the wet. It was a busy weekend being one of the last of the summer before school starts, so everything was booked but I scored the one fairly inexpensive, relatively, hotel room left in town at the Superior Motel & Suites.

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We had a good night’s sleep by the lake. The first thing this morning after coffee was to tackle Dana’s flat again. It took me about 15 minutes to find another piece of metal in the same spot, but it was so deeply embedded in the tread it wasn’t visible, and apparently only entered the tire innards when there was weight on the wheel. It took 10 minutes of digging with a knife, pliers and tweezers to get it out: a little shard of metal about 1 mm by 2 mm. Our first stopped this morning was at Advance Auto parts for another patch kit (LBS wasn’t open ’til 10). Armed with fresh glue, we took off for Munising, MI & Lake Superior.