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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. 

St. Ignace is a resort town on Lake Huron. And this particular Tuesday morning it was pretty sleepy. A few restaurants open but nothing that tickled our fancy. We had to get across the Mackinac Bridge, off limits to bicycles, and we were going to use the shuttle. We had an option of taking the ferry to Mackinac Island and then another ferry from there back to Mackinaw City, but unless we were going to stay on the island it didn’t make much sense and we didn’t think it could surpass Grand Island anyway. 

Not having any luck finding a Wi-Fi source in St. Ignace, we ended up at our old standard, Macca’s, but that also got us closer to the road to the bridge shuttle. Dana scoped out couple of camping options for us and we still had one outstanding warm showers request and we hadn’t heard back from. That’s not unusual, so we kept the option of Harbor Springs open, with Petoskey State Park Campground as a backup. 

After coffee and some breakfast, we headed out to find the bridge operation headquarters. They do not make it easy to do that on a bicycle. One option is to ride down i-75 and then cross four lanes of traffic. Google gives you the option of going way around and ending up in some senior center and then walking through the woods to get to the operations building. No clear path showed up on the satellite image, so we skipped the potential bushwacking. We ended up at the State Police building looking at a pedestrian crossover bridge that had steps. That did not seem very appealing as we’d have to take our bags off the bike, carry everything up and over and down again. Dana went into the state police barracks and they said to just go across the toll booth plaza (no EZPass here). Traffic is slow and you’ll be able to stop at each booth. So, we did that crossing eight lanes of toll booths through the traffic. At the operations HQ, there was an older man getting permits for some number of vehicles and trucks. It was a slow process as he kept dropping everything. Then as he was filling out one form he asked the attendant how to spell “silver.”

Once we finally got to the window it was a quick process. 15 bucks each for the bikes and us and we walked out the door, down a ramp and there was Todd with a pickup truck waiting to help us load. We hoisted the bikes into the bed of the pickup, by the way, it was not really set up to haul bikes back and forth, which you think they might have thought about in offering this service. The bridge is 5 miles long and we had a nice chat with Todd about his career, caring for his elderly parents, kids, marriages, etc., etc. Over in Mackinaw City, we started following our course to Harbor Springs and maybe Petoskey campground via the Tunnel of Trees. 

We got a recommendation about the Tunnel of Trees from a guy who rode along side us in the UP to ask what we were doing. He suggested the Tunnel vs. Bicycle Route 36. What he didn’t know, was that parts of the Tunnel had been washed out in June & July rainstorms and much of it was closed. We did get a small section that was Tunnel-worthy, but much of the day was spent climbing hills on the detours.

We didn’t hear from our Harbor Springs Warmshowers host, so we knew we would be heading to the campground. Harbor Springs itself didn’t impress except to its excess displays of wealth and snootiness. Not our kind of place, though we did stop at the local grocery for a few staples before heading out. We had stopped at a local bike shop to inquire about any other camping options, but Ed sent us to the campground we were heading to, though he did give us an alternate route to the path along the highway, and a recommendation for a pit stop before getting to the campground.

We stopped at the Petoskey Brewing Company for a beer and got the same vibe as Harbor Springs, so didn’t make it a long stop. In the campground, we toured around before heading the office and getting suggestions from the very thorough ranger before we picked a site. We set up and set about foraging for firewood and making dinner. Dana couldn’t find our can opener (an army rations opener that was very small and easy to lose), but one of our neighbors gave us a spare opener, to keep nonetheless. We ate in the dark with our headlamps on and enjoyed our fire before heading into bed after a long and exhausting day.

Pics to follow soon(ish)…