Las night was quiet after all. A couple vehicles left a little after dark, cutting the noise from that campsite substantially. The baby stopped crying too. A comfy 60F, just a little wind in the trees.

It’s sunny, but that won’t last. It’s raining in Paradise as I write, where there’s a line of thunderstorms coming off Lake Superior. They’ll hit Sault Ste Marie shortly and here in maybe a couple hours. It looks like there might be a partial opening in the front (ie just some rain, not a torrent) but I’m not counting on it. I’ll be getting rained on today. My hope is that it will pass and let me on my way.

I arrived at DeTour State Forest a bit after 5pm. It’s about 5 miles short of DeTour Village* on a little point sticking into Lake Huron. This is the first “forest” of this trip; the two previous camp sites have been “parks”. The two have different missions, but from a camping standpoint the main differences are: no plumbing and (lately) no staff.

So state forests tend to attract fewer old couples in RVs and families with children, and more middle-aged hunters and fishermen. Which makes it ironic that this is the first place (this trip) where I’ve had a problem with noisy neighbors. Cadillac and Petoskey were very different from each other but nicely quiet. DeTour… isn’t.

It’s mostly just one family, in the two sites next to the one I picked. I counted five vehicles and there had to be at least a dozen people, including one child and two 13ish girls. And a bunch of adults with voices that carry. I ended up unstaking and picking up my tent and carrying it to the other end of the campground, then walking the bike to my new site. There’s a baby near this site that cries from time to time (who brings a baby camping?) but that’s better than the shouting and squealing and laughing.

In addition to having no one to police noise levels, “no staff” means no reservations and no one to collect fees. They do it on the honor system: you fill out a little form and drop it with your fee into a little pillar. I didn’t have the right change. Or a pen.

I left the tent and rode into DeTour for supper. I went to the Mainsail, based on online reviews. It’s basically a bar with a menu; I had the whitefish sandwich, hoping to have something localish that way. The waitress let me borrow her pen to fill out my campsite form. I got the correct change to leave at the campsite. (And I just realized that I forgot to leave a tip. Oops.)

At one point in the planning I intended to take the ferry to Drummond Island, just across the channel, and the true easternmost point of UP Michigan. But there’s nothing super special about it, and it didn’t seem worth the trouble for just an hour or two.

I returned to the campground early enough to hike the trail here, which takes you through the various habitats if the area (e.g. shoreline, hardwood, dirt road back to the campground).

The Google itinerary for today estimated 107 miles. My odometer registered over 150. That reflects a little bit of getting lost, some side trips (I rode out to the end of one of the peninsulas into Lake Huron, only to find a “private property” sign), and going into DeTour and back. Which is part of the reason I aim for 100 miles/day.

Tomorrow is slated for 130. And that’s not counting a possible side trip into Canadia.

*Every road sign refers to the village of DeTour as a village to avoid confusing people who might think it’s referring to a “detour”.

After reaching St Ignace, I headed to the cemetery next to the State Park, which both have a great view of the Bridge. A middleaged woman on a Yamaha Vino 50 arrived and appeared to be tending a grave. She approached me, and I asked if she’d ever taken it on the Bridge. She hadn’t, but she’s walked it (on Labor Day) and she said something about being up the towers(!).

I grabbed lunch at the Driftwood Motel restaurant in St Ignace, where I had a nice turkey panini. I still had half a tank of gas, but wasn’t completely confident that I’d find a gas station before reaching DeTour (I would have). But figuring that I’d have to fill up in DeTour regardless (to make it to Sault Ste Marie tomorrow) I bought half a gallon of gas.

My route from there was simple enough, but I managed to good it up anyway. Trying to get on the Mackinac Trail out of St Ignace, I missed the turn off and found myself Onths parking lot for Castle Rock, an outcropping of rock with a tourist trap attached. Knowing that a hike up to the top would only freak me out, I turned around and found the turn-off.

The route consisted mostly of two state highways. As a rule, letter-number roads like M123 and M134 would be bad for me, but they are literally the only way to get there. Fortunately “there” is not a major population center or tourist destination, so the amount of traffic wasn’t bad. Almost every time an SUV, car, or semi pulled up behind me, he could immediately pull over and pass.

I also pulled over for time to time myself. One place was Hessel, a little marina village, next to Cedarvile, a village with a gas station. Hessel had… a phone booth. Welcome back to the 20th century. 🙂

If you can read this, it means I briefly got a data connection. I might be offline a bit the next couple days. I’ll post when AT&T permits.

Well that was easy!

There was a sign by the highway that said “lane closed on bridge” (no, it didn’t say which), but I spied with my zoom lens and saw traffic in both lanes at the crest of the span. So I geared up, got on the expressway, and rode.

I maintained a speed of 35mph all the way (until traffic slowed down at the toll booth). No one was in the left lane, and the car behind me stayed there. I just don’t look to the right, and I was fine. The attendant at the booth didn’t ask any questions, and I rode on into St Ignace. (There was a lane closed, but it was going in the other direction.)

I got off to kind of a shaky start this morning. I almost headed off on M119 with an empty gas tank (which would not have ended well). But I noticed before I got far, and turned around to fill up. That was an awkward situation because the place I stopped was a full-service station… but I had to do the actual filling myself because the kid attending me wouldn’t know where to stop. So I paid a few cents extra for the convenience of him walking my credit card inside to pay. Then in the fluster of dealing with this awkward transaction, I put my gloves in the “wrong” place, and I was briefly afraid I’d lost them because they weren’t where I always put them when I take them off.

As anyone who has ever lived or worked with me knows, I do not suffer from OCD. My home and my office are both… chaotic. But when I leave both home and work…

In the wilderness, OCD is not a disorder; it is a survival trait. It comes in handy when traveling in general, but it manifests full-blown when I went backpacking for the first time in years, back in 2002. Keeping track of every item you are carrying… where it belongs, where it IS… can make the difference between a good hike an a disaster. The circumstantial OCD I learned for two trips to wilderness of Isle Royale serves me well for traveling by scooter as well.

Every item I bring is on the packing list. Every item on the packing list has a place. While I am not inflexible – the iPhone can go either in my left front pants pocket OR in the left pocket of my riding jacket, as appropriate – I find it very helpful to stick to the plan. That way I know in an instant whether I have my wallet or not. I can put my hands on my rain gear in seconds if needed (and in one case it was). In an environment in which all of the familiar things are absent, the familiarity of the packing system provides comfort.

The ride from Petoskey to Mackinaw was a good one. M119 was as much a pleasure to ride as I remembered. And I stayed to roads closer to the lakeshore this time; last time I wasn’t sure if they were paved all they way, so I took a surer route.