Category: Vacation

Michigan 2015 started with our second Door County Century ride.  We again pulled our camper up there, camped in Potowatomi State campground, across the Bay from the main part of town.  The ride went well, we did our 100 miles in about the same fashion as last year.  Sharon and Ann rode with us the whole way. That may have been their first full century (?).

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Looking NW from Sturgeon Bay towards Green Bay.

 

Inside the main county fair building, where vendors set up.

 

 

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One of several draw bridges that go over Sturgeon Bay, in action.  The town is cut in half by the bay. These bridges get a lot of action.

 

 

A lot of Madison riders rented a nice beachfront house in Door County.  We had an apre’ ride party there.

 

Beautiful beach, strong wind, big waves.

 

More Sturgeon Bay pics are here:

 

 

 

 

 

We got up early the next morning and burned over to the Petosky State Campground, near it’s namesake in upper Michigan. It’s about 340 miles, and we didn’t want to pull in at night. The camp is right on the water, on the beautiful Little Traverse Bay. Harbor Springs is nearby to the north, Charlevoix 20 miles or so to the south.  An off road bike path goes from Harbor Springs, through our camp, to Charlevoix.

The campground was lightly attended and partially closed off.  Our site was very near the beach. Between that, and the bike path, we extended our stay from 3 to 4 days.

Charlevoix on bikes

 

 

 

 

 

 

Famous coffee joint in Petosky

 

Sunset on Little Traverse Bay

 

 

More pictures from the Petosky area are here:

One day we pedaled to Harbor Springs, on the bike path for the most part.  Small, cute town.  Reeks of money. Old money.  Big money.  The lineup on Mansion Row is how the Rockefellers and Fords lived, back in the day.  It hasn’t changed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leland was the next stop.  We crashed at Jim and Leslie’s for a few days.  Parked our camper out on the road by the golf course.  Strolled around town. Played some tennis on the clay. Got in a sweet group bike ride on the Heritage Trail.

 

Leslie, hanging at the clay courts

 

 

 

Sleeping Bear Dunes

 

Group bike ride. A rest stop in Empire.  It’s worth noting that upper Michigan had recently suffered a straight line wind of hurricane force, 100mph or more. These intense winds came without warning, didn’t blow for all that long, and knocked down a million trees.  The devestation was contained, and a bit random, but but where it was bad, it looked like an atom bomb had gone off.  We pedaled through some of the worse areas in the Heritage Trail.

 

 

 

 

Another rest stop at Glen Lake

 

More pictures from Leland are here:

 

 

 

 

 

While we were there, the annual antique sports car show came to town.  The lineup was fantastic, if you’re into that kind of thing.  Here’s the entire shoot of this event, no editing.  Don’t click this if old sports cars and wooden boats bore you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stayed in Traverse City with the Stubers.  Mark Linder was there, having come out to fish with Bob, in Canada.  They brought back a lot of fish.  We ate a lot of fish.   One sunny day Bob, Mark, Eileen and me (and Bela, the dog) walked downtown and hung out on a pier.  Four miles round trip, which just about finished me and my still delicate hip.  I could not keep up with the torrid pace set by Bob.  Bela showed advanced heeling skills.  Bob kept her on a short leash and she never left his hip, even when unruly dogs lunged and snarled at her.  She made up for that later by rolling is something dead and disgusting, so she’s not completely perfect.

 

 

More photos here:

 

 

 

 

 

Our last Michigan State Park before heading home was in Grand Haven.  Unusual setting, just a huge beach, a swath of sand that pushes hundreds of yards in. The park consists of paved roads and paved camping spots in a virtual desert of sand.

 

 

 

 

A very long, very old pier runs way out there.  It’s comprised mostly of huge rocks, piled in the water, with a concrete layer over the top.

 

 

We figured this arial tram to be a man mover of sorts, to gain access to the lighthouse with water washing over the pier.

 

 

 

 

More pics of this campsite are here:  (click)

 

 

 

 

 

Picture taking stopped right about here, when I slipped on a slimy spot wearing worn out crocs, fell backwards, cracked my head wide open, bled all over the pier and myself, and spent the rest of the day in the ER.  I won a prize for taking the hardest head blow they’d ever seen without being knocked out cold.

We stuck around for another day or two, then that was all she wrote, we headed back to Madison.

 

 

 

Quick vacation to Bayfield, a spur of the moment trip.  Neither of us had been there before.  Our camper paid off big time, since on short notice there was zero housing to be had in the area.  Perhaps it was because their Big Top Chautauqua was hosting the Wailin Jennys, for which we had tickets.

We researched local campgrounds, found a nice, large one in Washburn, 12 miles south of Bayfield.  Memorial Park.  Nothing fancy, clean showers (altho they were coin fed. That was a first.  $0.25 for each five minutes, and you’d better have quarters.). First come first served, no reservations.  We took off early on a Wednesday and burned up there, hoping to get lucky.  And we did – we got the last spot in that campground.

One side of it was more open, had more big rigs. The other side was more wooded, mostly smaller rigs.

There’s a 2nd campground on the southern edge of Washburn called Thompson’s West End Park.  No pictures of it.  It’s more wide open, somewhat less appealing than Memorial, but still very serviceable.  And to note: there is an overflow field made available if no campsites are to be had.  We camp off grid all the time – this could be a lifesaver on a crowded weekend.

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We headed to Bayfield the first evening to look around.  Came back the next day, hopped on the ferry to Madeline Island, with our bikes. It ain’t cheap getting over there.  They charged us for each body, and each bike. $42 for us both.

Many roads are paved on the island, many are not.  An ideal bike would have fatter tires for some dirt, but we were on our fast road bikes. Still, there was enough mileage to make a decent day out of it.  We pedaled through both the state campground, Big Bay State Park, and another camp site named Big Bay Town Park.  It’s more of a “city level” park.  Here’s its official description.

Big Bay Town Park:

 

Scenes from Hartman Creek

and our float on the Mecan

Third time down there for Tim and Eileen.  This time the Walls of Madison crossed paths with us, their first visit to the place.  Tom’s sister Therese showed up for a couple of days. Before getting into specifics, let’s open up with a gallery of “tiny RVs”.  More than a few of our friends are anticipating empty nests and have allowed that it might not be so bad to caravan all over the place willynilly . . . but NOT with one of them honking enormo trailers or buses. So to that end and for everyone’s viewing pleasure, here are some of the cool smaller rigs seen down south.

 

We arrived in Ft DeSoto a few days before the Walls.  Our campsite and a few shots nearby.

(For more photos of the camping area proper, refer to previous postings.

Fort DeSoto 2007

Fort DeSoto 2012     )

A note.  This camp is divided into three areas: tent and popups, big guys with no pets, big guys with pets.  Our other two trips were in the tenting area, but now we have a (petite 17′) solid body RV, so we were in with the buses and 5th wheels.  Quite a difference in look and feel. 3/4’s of the rigs are rock star tour buses.  Lots of gigantic 5th wheelers, and an odd assortment of typically gargantuan stuff.  We feel like we’re sandwiched between skyscrapers at times. The neighborhood is eerily quiet.  No one is around!  I guess when you have half a Mil into your rig, by God you’re gonna sit in it all damn day. In the tents area, everyone is out, milling around talking to their neighbors.  I guess that’s what you do when you don’t have two big screen TVs to pass the time.  Another note – half our fellow campers are Canadian.  Makes for a real peaceful time.

 

The Walls showed up with a rented, perfectly restored early model Vanagon.  Stunning to look at, less stunning to sleep in according Ms. Wall.

 

The first morning we were all there we pedaled to North Beach, mostly to look around.  It’s 4.5 miles to the northern end of North Beach.  We measured the parking lot there at 3/4 of a mile.  Just huge.   First stop, the old Fort and the very large pier right next to it.  I flatted heading to the pier and discovered my rear tire was down to the threads.  Got it going again, but a day later, on our first ride on the Pinellas Bike Trail, I had to burn the better part of an hour buying and installing a new one.

 

The Wall’s first look at North Beach.

 

Sadly there’s no photo documentation of our first group assault of the Pinellas Trail. It was an excellent ride, about 38 flat miles, a good start to the season.

We drove to a launch spot at the closest point, near Gibbs High School. Pedaled out about 18 miles, had lunch in Belleair,  then turned around. We grilled one night at our campsite.

 

Another day Eileen and Cathy accompanied Therese on her Quest for Housing.  She and Mark are figuring to come down next winter for a couple of months and by God she’s not going to be caught living in some flophouse!  So Tim and Tom, left unsupervised, drove to the nearest Publix, got on a bike path spur that went north and eventually hit the main Pinellas Trail.  It turned out to be an interesting section. It wound hither and yon, following a stream bed, and it went through the heart of some of the lower economic rungs of the entire county.  We saw some serious daytime pickup hoops.  No one bothered us.  Once we hit the main trail, it was a solid off-road run into downtown St. Petes.  We played the tourist at the beach, then rode north to check out some neighborhoods and more of the Pinellas Trail on the east side of the county. On the way back into town, hit a bike shop, bought another tire for Eileen’s bike.  Then we reversed our steps all the way back to the truck.   Nice ride. Below, Tom rides through a bunch of roosting birds on a bridge, not content to let them chill.

 

Here’s a dark beach evening inside the camp at Ft. DeSoto where all five of us watched the sun go down.

 

The Walls eventually had to leave.  We were very sad! They made the drive home with one stop in Atlanta.

Tim and Eileen got one more long ride in on the West section of the Pinellas Trail.  We drove (and drove and drove) to a trailhead near Belleair and went north from there.  The highlight was Dunedin, a small town reeking of charm north of Clearwater.   Some local artist specialized it jazzing up cruiser bikes into works of art.  He had a dozen of them scattered around town.

 

Then is was time to move on. Tim and Eileen packed up and made the long drive to Panama City for a three day stay at St. Andrews State park.  St. Andrews is located on the very eastern edge of Panama City Beach, mostly away from dense craziness.  It’s a large park with a few great beaches.  The camping was tight, a little more red-necky than DeSoto, but good anyway.  Good infrastructure, very nice showers. The coastline is complex around Panama City.  Our camp was “on the water”, in this case “St Andrews Bay – Grand Lagoon”.  We hit a cold front.  The first night it was 45F and the wind howled off the water.  But a day later it warmed way up and the wind died.

We only stuck around for 3 days, 2 night.  Met some WI folks in camp who gave us some tips.  There’s a short riding loop in the park, after that we rode city streets in Panama City Beach.  Nothing special.  But we were told that if we crossed a bridge to the other side of the lagoon, the riding expanded considerably.   It’s a place to consider returning to, and it’s 400 miles closer than St. Petersburg.

 

 

Next stop – Charleston, SC

This was another 400 mile day.  We got an early start, still showed up to our campground in the dark, lost, ten minutes after the gate was scheduled to close. Luckily the gate guy was late too.  We got in ok and the staff took good care of us.  This was the day when we finally realized that we can’t be expecting to move from one camping spot to the next with a 400 mile gap in between and still show up before dark.   300 miles is about the limit.

Our home was another county park named James Island.  It was a decent enough place to camp. Huge acreage in total, not much vegetation around the campers, we were packing in tight.  Nice shower facilities, very friendly campground hosts.  James Island is a multi-use area.  It hosts a lot of large music concerts, there are vast fields for that.  It has an large water park, which wasn’t open yet.  This multi acre park is laced with paved bike paths.  As we were to find out, this was all the biking that  occurs anywhere within a hundred miles.

The whole Charleston area is complex, very rugged shorelines, water and rivers everywhere.  Few roads actually qualify as through roads, the vast majority are short neighborhood affairs. It seems to be an old habit in these parts to make driving lanes a foot or two more narrow that we’re used to. There are no paved shoulders, period.  All this adds up to a death trap in wait for cyclists.  We didn’t even try.

Charleston proper is almost an island, and is one of the most dense places I’ve ever visited.  Our camp was 8 miles away and we made the mistake of driving downtown with our truck.  We’re lucky we’re not still there, stuck in traffic.  Narrow streets, thousands of pedestrians, a few bicycles with suicidal tendancies.  No place to park much of anything, let alone a 19′ truck.  We wandered around, realized we weren’t going to be getting out of our vehicle, and made the slow slog off the island. We never saw a single thing of note there.

For what it’s worth, here’s a few pics of the camp