53.7 miles, 1148′ of climbing (682 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

The rainy start to our morning soon abated and we kept on heading to Madison and checked with Mike if it was OK to leave some of our stuff at their house while we toured Madison. Got a “Yes” back and continued to Mike’s & Chandra’s, dropped our heavy stuff on their porch, and headed out for a loop around Lake Monona. We ended up back downtown at the State Capitol Building, had a nap at the James Madison Park, and made our way back to our hosts.

68 miles, 1570′ of climbing (682 tot) – to read from the beginning, click here.

Got up early to snap a photo & see Chris off to work (occupational therapy at a local hospital). Had breakfast with Liz & Toby and then made our way off to our next stop — of which we had a general idea, but weren’t quite sure where we were going. Liz offered a list of things to do in Milwaukee, but we decided we’d better keep moving, so we headed west (and we lost our chicken mascot, Lazy Loraine, on a speed bump and didn’t realize it to much later).

45 miles, 929′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

We awoke to a little bit of rain on the camper, but went inside to be treated to a filling breakfast of pancakes, granola, & yogurt. Today we are heading up to Muskegon to get the ferry over to Milwaukee. Dana wanted to do the UP (Upper Peninsula of MI) like EVERYONE who we talked to said we should do. I had to be the voice of reason and point out that adding 700+ miles to this trip wouldn’t get us to any of our original goals and leave us without a chance to finish. So, we’re off to Milwaukee.

45.8 miles, 1048′ of climbing (484 total miles) – to read from the beginning, click here.

This post is a bit late as I needed to let Chris’ passing sink in. And, we’ve been moving, moving, moving…

After the really hot & restless night in Van Buren, we got on the road to our next stop in Holland, MI. The terrain was, again, very flat, and the bicycle facilities top notch. We stopped in downtown Holland for a break and a beer, then headed to our hosts in Waukazoo Woods (go ahead, say it out loud: Wah-ka-zoo. Isn’t it fun?). We hit it off with Stephen & Kathy and got take out pizza and had a lovely evening in their amazing home on Lake Macatawa. After a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and tips from Stephen on interesting stops, off we went again.

56 miles, 1037′ of climbing (1360′ Down!) – to read from the beginning, click here.

Sad news this morning that my best friend in the world passed after a long three months in hospice with congestive heart failure. We had many discussions and goodbyes during his time in hospice and I’m glad we had that chance. One of the things we discussed was whether I should leave on this trip, and he was very supportive of me going ahead with our plans. I’m going to do a longer toast to Chris at the end of this post if you are interested, but for now will get on with the trip.

We left Steve and Jane after coffee & breakfast and our daily ritual of reloading the bikes. Our destination today was Van Buren State Park with a stop on the way at South Haven.

70 miles, 2315′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

Waking up in a campground while touring is its own little adventure. Get out of the tent (as quietly as you can), head to the restrooms (or closest trees that block the other campers’ view), maybe crawl back in the tent for another few minutes, heat water for coffee, make something that resembles breakfast (never cooked in our campground), and then start gathering and repacking. We’ve done it in a half hour or so when there’s a tight schedule, but usually it’s an hour and a half or more. Today was about that 1 1/2 hour before we rolled out of the campground.

69.3 miles, 1650′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

After a hearty and healthy breakfast of yogurt, granola, & crepes, we said good-bye to David and Christa, and headed off to see Michigan Stadium before heading out of town. Since it’s half-buried, it’s not quite as impressive as Beaver Stadium or the Gator Stadium in Gainesville, but since it’s still the largest capacity stadium in the U.S. and the second largest in the world, we had to imagine what it looked like from the inside.

65 miles, 1342′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

Today’s ride took us through the outskirts of Toledo — from inner city blight to ‘burbs to farmland on the way to Ann Arbor. After arriving at David’s & Christa’s, we got both a warm welcome and a warm shower. David, it turns out, went to Penn State for his advanced degree in acoustics and works for Ford. Christa is a retired schoolteacher who spent three years at the JFK school in Berlin where Aaron & Sarah went when we lived there. But before we had an evening of story swapping with them, we headed into Ann Arbor for a quick tour of this Big10 town.

71.6 miles, 784′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

A quick breakfast at Laney’s, a little work on the bikes, and we were off to what we thought would be Maumee Bay State Park. It was a beautiful day and we spent much of our ride on the North Shore Inland Trail. The most flat we’ve had so far, and Ohio has been a lot of flat and a great way to ease our muscles and butts in for a long tour.

60.1 miles, 1532′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

After bidding adieu to Greg & Eileen, we headed off to Norwalk and our next Warmshowers host, Laney. It started raining shortly after we left and we ducked into a pet food manufacturer’s covered dock and had a conversation with one of the employees, Bob, about the pet food industry and how it changed in the 50 years he’d been there.