I woke at 6 this morning, after a pretty good night’s sleep. It was starting to get light, and I needed to pee, and it’s not much earlier than I usually wake up, so I got up. It’s 55F, but I was warm enough in my bag. (I would’ve paid good money for a night this cool a couple weeks ago.)

Although I ended up taking Old 27 (again) yesterday, and I retraced a few miles of US31 when I got to Petoskey, my route for today is the first deliberate repetition from an earlier ride. There are two reasons for routing myself this way again: 1) I’m approaching a bottleneck at the Straits, and there are only a few viable options; 2) this stretch of road is really nice.

It’s called “the tunnel of trees”. For 30 miles M119 is a one-lane paved road curving through the woods near the shoreline, where the trees often form a complete canopy. It’s twisty, it’s very low traffic, and it’s pretty. It’s simply the best option going north from here.