Bird-sighting update: in the space of a couple minutes I saw: a crow the size of a small opossum dining on a small opossum by the side of the road; a hawk or some other mid-sized bird of prey, scanning a cornfield from only a few dozen feet up; and to great blue herons taking flight from a marsh, and flying right over me. I was unable to get pictures of any of this, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
As I expected, traffic picked up as I got closer to Port Huron. Less predictably, so did the cloud cover. But it never got worse than a thin overcast, and began to break up when I vote to Port Huron.
The Blue Water Bridges are impossible to miss, at least with the approach I took (taking an alternate parallel road rather than the highway into town). It used to be simple Bridge, but when there are too many cars somewhere, the answer in Michigan (and Ontario) is to build more road. So they built another span, right next to the other. But they deliberately chose a different design for the new one, so they don’t match. I disapprove.
Traffic looked like it was moving reasonably fast for an international bridge. That is, it was like a mild traffic jam. One problem is that all of the international stuff has to be done at the “other” side of the bridge, so the line backs up across it. That, as much as any rules about engine size on the interstate, is why I am not riding my scooter across any bridge to Canada. You see, a moving scooter is inherently stable; it has gyroscopic forces holding it up and moving in a straight line. A stationary scooter is just waiting to fall over.
Across the St Clair River (for that’s what Lake Huron is reduced to at this spot) I could see a handful of Canadian wetbacks trying to get up the nerve to swim across. Actually they were teenagers being typically reckless by jumping from the walkway at the base of the Bridges into the water, swimming downstream a few yards, and climbing out. I half expected the Mounties or whatever to haul them away, but it didn’t happen.
My timing arriving at Algonac State Park was perfectly bad. A family of three (parents and preteen boy) were registering. They had come from Boston. On recumbent bicycles. And are going to Seattle, then LA. They’re raising money for a children’s hospital. By comparison, my journey looks pretty… tame. Oh well.
