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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.
The tent was slightly wet, but everything inside was dry. I had found a couple of holes that looked like critter bites and covered them with gorilla tape, so that may have helped keep us dry. I uncovered the bikes, and we made coffee, had breakfast, and put things away as they dried out.
It was pretty overcast, and our devices needed to be charged so I went to the pavilion to work on that and the blog, and Dana took a walk on the beach. When she came back she told me about meeting Patrick at the Grand Island ferry concession stand. That became our focus for the day and we quickly assembled everything and took off for Grand Island.
At the ferry station we had a discussion with Patrick about our bikes versus the mountain bikes they had and we all decided it and we unpacked everything and stowed it in their storage area. Patrick gave us a very good briefing about the island trails and roads and which ones were double-track, which ones were single track and which ones were sand. He also briefed us on a closed route and a way to get around it. It was around a 20 mile loop to get around the island. We caught the noon ferry captained by Patrick and his crew person, Elena. We got over to the island at about 12:10 and we had up until the last ferry at 6:00 to finish (or stay overnight on the island!).
The first part of the trail was double track and it was mostly good but rocky with a lot of roots. Every once in a while, we caught a stunning view of the lake from the cliffs. We made the first station at 4 miles in about an hour so we decided to continue the rest of the way to the North Island.
The whole time we were reminiscing about the Timber Trail, the very hard mountain biking trail we did in New Zealand with our fully loaded touring bikes. At least this time it was just the bikes and us. Unfortunately as we had forgot bug spray and tools in our haste to get our packs off the bike, so, everything had to be working perfectly.
After that first station the road turned to sand and it was a bit much for our bikes especially going uphill. So we did a lot of walking, but made the the next milestone in enough time to consider continuing on to the north tip of the island. We’ve got to the Northeast Point overlook at about 3:00. That gave us 3 hours to do about 10 mi back to the ferry.
Grand Island was a resort from 1900 to 1950. And there was a carriage track all the way around the island to show the tourists the north part of the island since all the lodging was on the south end. We were on the remnants of that carriage trail. Much of the way back was double track and we made pretty good time. We met a couple of mountain bikers trying to get to that Northeast overlook. At that point, we were four miles from it and they took off hoping to make it there and back to catch the 6 PM ferry. They came up behind us later and they had decided to nix the overlook and try something shorter. We rode behind them a while until we split off towards the ferry.
We made it back to the ferry landing at 10 to 5 which gave us a little time to check out the Visitor Contact Center which houses one of the original wooden skiffs used to transport people from the mainland to the island along with historical placards. We jumped on the ferry and were glad we made it. It was a very hard day and we were both sore from the constant braking and hard uphill peddling but the worst was the sandy roads.
Back at the concession stand, Patrick and Elena took their power washers to our bikes and cleaned off the sand and matt mud. Five plus stars the crew at the Grand Island concession.
We reloaded the bikes and went to the hotel checked in. At best a two-star hotel but in tour a season it was four stars for us. Dana asked me if I regretted getting a hotel room when the weather was so nice and it didn’t . I said no cuz rain was still expected and I’d be very happy not to be in a wet tent on Sandy Beach.
We showered and went into town to have dinner at the Mexican restaurant. Very good and filling veggie burritos. (Oh, and it started raining while we were there — no regrets for sure!) We followed that with a visit to the ByGeorge brewery we had skipped yesterday. Whiskey Ryan, the band from last night, was there but in a duo configuration with his partner Shelly.
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