Day 47. Rogers City to Oscoda, 96 miles

I got to see Luis and Adrienne today!! But first I had to ride 96 miles.

When I was planning this trip, I did an enormous amount of the legwork up front: I used the ACA maps, state maps, Googlemaps, and Google and made a spreadsheet with the starting point and destination for each day, including mileage and the place I intended to sleep. This has stood me in good stead over the course of the trip—it takes a lot of the logistical hoopla out of the mix on a day-to-day basis. Even if I decide to switch things up, I have some benchmarks to start with, and Andrew works with me to keep the spreadsheet updated as things move around. It’s been terrific. Where’s the but? Oh, right here: it turns out sometimes I hit a snag in the plotting—too many miles and not enough accommodations, e.g.—and got lazy and didn’t resolve it. I find that out when I get to that day in the spreadsheet and something is not as it should be. This stretch—Rogers City through Ann Arbor or so—appears to be one such spot. Old me, the me yet not yet riding a bike all day every day, decided to fudge a stretch that left me with at least one and possibly two very long days. And now it is turning out those are days my friends are coming to see me, and I want to hang with them.

I spend some time trying to find alternate accommodations to break things up differently and staring at the map (maybe if I stare hard enough the mileage will change?), but ultimately there is not much I can do but keep open the possibility of hitching a ride with them for some miles if I can’t make it.

I haul my butt out of the tent at 5, earlier than I’ve been getting going since the plains, to discover that the passage of summer and my passage into ET mean it no longer gets light at 5:15. But the sun is up by 6 and I’m on the road by 6:30, and the morning starts with beachside trail. BEACHSIDE TRAIL.

When Joyce and I decided to do the Lake Michigan Circle Tour so many years ago, this is kind of what I imagined riding our bikes around the lake would be like: you just ride your bike next to the lake! That is not, in point of fact, how most of it turns out to be. Private property occupies much of the lakefront or the roads don’t go along the lake or the road is between you and the lake or any number of other circumstances. But this was magical: just me and a trail and a sunrise and the lake for a bit.

It was over too soon, but it was glorious.

And then I rode miles. I had a mix of winds, but nothing truly terrible and even some affirmative help. By noon or so it was clear to me that I would be able to make it; I was clocking 12+ mph and doing a good job keeping breaks shorter, despite the plethora of tantalizing roadside parks and other sit-‘n-snack opportunities.

Intermittent stretches of trail continued throughout the day, pleasant little surprises that sometimes popped up even though they weren’t on the map.

Another thing that has been popping up more since I got to the Lower Penninsula: rudely violent pro-Trump signage. I’ve seen Trump signs on and off throughout the trip, though with lower density than in the past few years, perhaps because we’re between election cycles. It mostly doesn’t bear mention because it’s unsurprising and part of the landscape; one exception was the pickup truck flag in Idaho, whose slogan jarred me. But since I got to lower Michigan it’s been more frequent and aggressive. One house today featured a full-size driveway flagpole with two flags, one reading “TRUMP 2024: FUCK YOUR FEELINGS” and one “Let’s Go Brandon.” Later, in the parking lot of a transport company next to where I waited for a freight train to pass, a pickup sported four flags, only three of which I could read: another of the ridiculously childish “Let’s Go Brandon” flags, a Trump 2024 flag, and one that featured a nuclear warhead and the words “Go ahead and try it.”

I pound through the miles, enjoying some of the prettiest lakeside riding I’ve done all trip: Lake Huron is a lovely circle tour, with a lot more lake-adjacent riding than I’ve gotten accustomed to 💙

I make camp by just after 5 and quickly shower and set up, after which Luis and Adrienne come get me bearing hugs and a birthday bottle of my favorite rum, a find of my dad’s that has become a favorite of everyone I introduce to it. We head out to dinner at the only place open in Oscoda on a Monday night, a bar & grill called The Office, and trip over our words catching up with each other. After dinner, we go back to their utterly charming cabin for a quick nightcap, and then they drop me off at my campground. As I’m crawling into my tent, a freight train roars past maybe 15 feet behind me. I’d noticed the railroad tracks I bumped over as I entered the campground, but my slow and tired brain hadn’t done the math. As it turned out, the math involved 10:30 and 4:30 trains with awfully loud whistles. KOA Holiday! It turns out 96 is a lot of miles, though, and within seconds of the train noise fading I am dead asleep.