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West Saginaw Bay

Monday, 19th July 2010; 3:36 pm - Location: , ,

Last night’s rain gave way to drizzle this morning, which eventually gave way to overcast. I didn’t rush breaking camp, giving the tent and rain gear a little more time to dry before packing them. But without the sun, they were never going to dry entirely, so I showered, packed, and hit the road at about 8:30.

It was dry, but cool enough that I considered putting the rain coat on as another layer. I found a nice quiet two-lane road that would’ve gotten me off US-23 and through trees and farmland, but I was running low on gas so I took the US highway to the next city, then switched to the state highway, which wasn’t as busy. It was a 4-lane road, but those are nicer for a scooter than busy 2-lanes because faster vehicles can easily pass you.

I pulled off the highway at Linwood Rd, which led to the village of Linwood, on Saginaw Bay. Technically I had seen the Bay at Tawas, but that was the mouth of the bay, so it was really more like Lake Huron. It looks like the shoreline is dominated by marshes. They’re beautiful and a fascination environment, but not so great for building sandcastles and frolicking in the waves. This may account for it not being a vacation mecca.

A while latter I stopped on a whim when I saw I was passing Bay City State Rec Area. This turned into an extended stop, as overcast gave way to partly sunny, including a hike of the nature trail. My ad hoc bird-watching expedition nabbed me a trio of swans, a couple Great White Egrets, and – almost didn’t see it – a Great Blue Heron.

My plan was to have lunch in Bay City, which I’m doing… at 3pm. Finding a place for lunch in downtown Bay City/Essexville that isn’t a chain is not an easy task, but I found El Mexicano, an authentic Mexican restaurant, on one of the local strips. They stopped serving lunch at 2pm so I had dinner: a big plate of pollo jalisco, which I think will cover lunch and dinner just fine.

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Reflections at half way

Sunday, 18th July 2010; 9:56 pm - Location:

Obviously the trip hasn’t been going perfectly, but that’s to be expected. I might argue that it’s the point. (And since I’m the one who chose to do this, I would win that argument.)

Some people take trips to relax and take it easy. That’s fine, but it’s rarely my intent. I do it (among other reasons) to get away from my regular life and to challenge myself. It’s succeeding.

In some ways this is how I’d like to live: active for hours at a time, eating only to stay fueled, early to bed/rise, doing something different every day. Bit it’s also full of my biggest anxieties: unfamiliar places, all new people… traffic.

Traffic on this trip has generally been less stressful than last year. Some of that is probably my greater confidence level, but it’s mostly just the route I’ve been taking. (Riding US-2 across the UP with all the semis was… scary.) I rarely can keep up with traffic. But oncoming traffic is light enough that most of the time people can pass me quickly, sometimes without even letting up on the accelerator.

But some people are pricks, incompetent drivers, or both. The worst tend to be people towing campers or boats. They don’t grasp that they have 30 feet of vehicle behind them, and start to pull back over into my lane as soon as they can no longer see me out the passenger window.

To some people traveling like this is an insane unnecessary hardship. But to me it feels a bit like cheating. I’m not carrying my gear myself, I’m eating in restaurants (or store-bought sandwiches) rather than carrying and preparing my own meals… I’m not even walking from site to site. That’s doing it the right way. To be honest, I had another trip in mind (hiking in the Rockies), but decided I wasn’t in good enough shape for it. I’m not as young as I used to be either, and I have to allow for that. I consider myself lucky that I can still handle sleeping on the ground. As long as I can, I will. And when I can’t… I’ll adapt some more.

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More rain at Tawas Point

Sunday, 18th July 2010; 9:48 pm - Location:

It started raining lightly with a little thunder and lightning around 8:30pm. I held out for a while in my rain coat at the picnic table under the tree, but when it started to rain in earnest after 9, I quit the field and retreated to the tent.

Then at 9:30 it got ugly. I can’t see how bad, but I can hear it drumming on the tent’s rain shield in waves. Plus the lightning. And wind. I’m looking a some radar images (how could one travel without weather radar?) and it’s bright red. But I can see on radar that it’s just passing thru. And the forecast for tomorrow is partly sunny and only 10% chance of rain. Ah, Michigan!

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Rain (and sun) at Tawas Point

Sunday, 18th July 2010; 8:10 pm - Location: ,

You’d think I’d learn. I dropped a glove again (the other one) looking for a place to eat in Alpena. I noticed it was missing after lunch, and found it the same way. {sigh}

Stopping in Alpena turned out to be a good choice and a bad choice. It was good because it delayed me while some rain blew through ahead of me. (The steady headwind delayed me by about 5mph as well.) The road was often freshly wet, and even though I don’t like riding on wet roads, it’s better than riding on wet roads in the rain.

It was a bad choice because my timing was wrong for arriving in Tawas. It started raining during my approach to the park, and by the tine I got to my site, it was pouring.

Not knowing how much of this I’d have to put up with, I decided to pitch the tent. This is a nerve-wracking thing to do in the rain, because while it’s going up – before the rain fly is in place and adjusted – it’s vulnerable to the rain. Fortunately I’ve had a lot of practise putting up this tent, so I managed it without getting the interior or sleeping gear substantially wet. I stayed out of the tent, however. My “partial shade” site was a great help, giving me “partial rain shelter”. The main reason I didn’t take refuge in the tent is that it’s a kind of a commitment. I can’t take the rain gear into the tent with me, and if I leave it out it usually gets too wet to use. If it was close to bedtime I’d relent and commit to being in the tent till morning… but not at 4:30pm.

After about an hour, the rain tapered off, and the park came back to life. Tawas Point park is kind of like Holland State Park, more of a beach destination than a wilderness experience. It’s big, and even though the sites are a decent size, it still feels a bit like a while bunch of RVs (and tents) stacked row upon row. (On the other hand, the city park in nearby East Tawas has the RVs packed in almost side by side on cement “pads”, with one row of them separated from M-23 by just a chain link fence. Still the city park is packed, with some people apparently setting up summer cottages (on wheels) there.) The state park is located on a long sandy hook that forms a bay with nice shallow swimming beaches. The sandy point also makes it a prime bird-watching site, and the only nesting ground for piping plovers east of the Straits. I’m no serious bird-watcher, but I enjoyed hiking the trail.

I’m at the half-way point of the trip, which means it’s time to do laundry. There’s a coin-op laundrette near the park, which helpfully bought ad space in the park’s map/brochure. So I’m sitting with nearly all of my clothes in the washer, wearing just my shorts, my jacket, and my camp shoes.

There’s more rain coming soon. The forecast said the probability was dropping from 60% to 30% around now. It was wrong. So it’s back to the camp site, and when the rain hits, hunker down for the night.

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Lunch in Alpena

Sunday, 18th July 2010; 12:34 pm - Location: ,

It didn’t rain last night, at least no more than a few drops. But it was overcast and cool when I woke at 6. I didn’t do any morning sightseeing at the park: dreary light, already seen it, and I figured I’d have to get underway early to be ready for the rain. Sure enough, it started to sprinkle after my shower a little before 8, so I quickly broke camp. If you can possibly help it, you don’t want to pack a tent that’s wet from the rain. Not that I like riding in the rain, but as long as I’m geared up, better riding than sitting.

The rain’s been pretty light so far, off more than on. Traffic’s been fairly light as well. My route for today couldn’t be simpler: leave state park, follow US-23 south, watch for signs to state park. But I managed to complicate it. First I had to make a 5-mile detour to get gas. Later I left the highway to ride through Presque Isle, which is not in fact and island at all, but an area of small lames and harbors, with lots of cottages.

I’ve stopped in Alpena for lunch, and also to let some of the rain pass. I’m at John Boy’s, a homey hole in the wall with a simple menu, but clearly popular with the people who eat here.

Now I need to get underway to get to Tawas Point before the storm hits later this afternoon.

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Cheboygan, night two

Saturday, 17th July 2010; 9:33 pm - Location:

Putting the unpleasantness and disappointment of “Boblo” behind me, I had lupper in Cheboygan. Since the meal was serving a both lunch and supper, I splurged at a sit-down place on Main Street, called Mulligan’s. Their tagline is “Good food. Bad shots.” The second part is a reference to the golfing cheat of retaking a bad shot, called a mulligan. The place is also a full bar, so they serve… shots. A throng of bikers had been thru for lunch; it was 3:30, so I’d missed all but the last straggler. But I was early enough for the lunch menu.

Back at the state park I hit the trails. Once you’ve seen one northern hardwood forest by the big lake you’ve seen them all, so it wasn’t really special. But despite the bugs, it was a good hike. One leg of the trail was thru loose sand, behind the shore treeline. The walking actually got easier on the return leg, which was on the beach: a stereotypical east-coast beach of hard sand, rocks, and grasses. 🙂

I had a couple neat bird sightings. The first was a flock of swans bobbing on the waves, acting like oversized ducks: sticking the heads in the water and their tails into the air. The second sighting was a trio of bald eagles eating a fresh kill at the shoreline. They were behind some plants so they didn’t see me at first; I noticed one of them flapping its wings, which were way too big to belong to a shorebird. I crept closer, sticking to the trail like a good camper. Then one of them saw me (they have amazing eyesight) and they took off. I managed to squeeze off a couple of shots as they flew off, one of which is pretty good (ignoring the blurriness). (The iPhone sucks for wildlife photography, so those will have to wait until I get home and can upload the photos from the good camera.)

For those watching the map on the main page, today was the day that it didn’t change. I was in two counties (Bois Blanc is actually the same county as Mack Island, St Ignace, and a bunch of the UP) but both were repeats from last year. I’ll start lighting them up again tomorrow.

The weather is beautiful, partly sunny but breezy and not too hot. However that’s forecast to change, with a small chance of rain tonight, and 60-70% chance of rain tomorrow, all the way to Tawas Bay, my next campsite. So I’m expecting to scoot in the rain. The outlook for tomorrow night improves, then the day after should be back to partly sunny. I’ve checked radar, and there’s something really ugly in Minnesota that looks like the cause of these dire warnings for tomorrow. Regardless, it’s full rain protocol for the camp tonight: everything under cover as if rain were certain, just in case.

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