June 13, 2024
Greg Provides Alternate Definitions For Two Words
Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park (Presque Isle River Campground)
Today's ride was 96% pleasant . . . and 4% fantastic. For me, "pleasant" isn't just a nice way of saying "meh, it was okay." It means I had a damn good day. That being said, it should be pretty obvious that my "fantastic" is also pretty low key. To everybody else, it would be "wow, that's some of the greatest stuff any cyclist has ever experienced."
I'm going to get through the pleasant stuff as quickly as possible but, man, am I ever going to write a lot of words about the fantastic stuff. So I better get down to business immediately.
THE PLEASANT STUFF
First, when I checked out this morning, the motel owners said "no" to my request to leave my car in their parking lot for a couple weeks. I was okay with that because this was one of the rare occasions I had an alternative plan. I drove to the public parking lot I noticed while biking through the downtown area yesterday. It was right by the police station, so I went inside where a cop assured me I could park there for multiple nights without getting towed away. So that's where I loaded my gear onto my bike and began pedaling eastward with tons of pleasant glee.
Second, it was short day and a fairly easy day. Sure, there were a few billion view-blockers, but that didn't detract from the pleasantness at all. In fact, they might have enhanced the pleasantness by expanding their blocking skills to include wind-blocking.
Third, the Iron Belle Trail turned out to be a pretty nice route for the first ten miles of my day. The next few miles on the four-lane highway between Bessemer and Wakefield weren't bad either.
Fourth, there was just enough sun that I could ride in short-sleeves, and just enough clouds that I didn't have to slather sunscreen all over me to prevent such things as painful sunburn and cancerous melanoma.
All in all, the first 26-miles of the day was a very pleasant ramble. It was so nice that I slowed down to soak it all in. I just didn't want the ride to end.
Before I get to the last five miles that really, REALLY made my day special, please look at a few of my pictures and captions.
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THE FANTASTIC STUFF
Here is the point where things got exciting. It started when I pulled onto a gravel road to urinate. When I was done with that task, I pedaled back to the main road and had to stop for a car speeding by, which was surprising because I hadn't seen a car for quite a while. Suddenly, that car hit the brakes. I worried that maybe the driver saw me and wanted to ask a bunch of questions. To my relief, he continued on down the hill. Then he came to a complete stop and I saw why.
I have to admit that I knew my chances of seeing either a bear or a moose in the U.P. were, in reality, pretty slim. But I'll be damned, when I looked down the hill, a black bear was standing in the very lane I was riding on a few minutes earlier. The car was stopped in the other lane, waiting for him to cross. The bear seemed to be in no hurry to cross though.
I looked at the bear for several seconds and I think he was looking at me. I was stunned. A better nature photographer would have his camera readily at hand. I was slow to get my phone out of my pocket and zoom in, but at least I managed some evidence of my bear sighting. If you look closely at the next photo, you can see its back legs. The rest of him had already sauntered in front of the car.
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5 months ago
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I was still about four miles away from Lake Superior when I took that picture, but I had the advantage of being 700-feet above Superior level. Not even view-blockers can overcome a straight shot down from that elevation.
Admittedly, the view-blockers quickly regained the upper hand well before I reached the bottom of that hill. I didn't see the lake again until I got to my campsite.
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5 months ago
After checking in at the ranger station, I raced down to the campground. It's touted as a rustic campground, and it lived up to its name. No electricity, no dump station, no lighting to help folks get to the pit toilets without a flashlight, no wifi, not even cell phone service. It did have water though. The cool thing was that you had to walk a hundred yards into the woods to get it. And you had to use your arm strength to get the water out of the ground via a big steel pump. I loved it.
The best thing of all, however, was that I had a view of the greatest lake in the world from my site. Yes, the view was partially obstructed by view-blockers, but I had a plan to overcome that.
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Today's ride: 31 miles (50 km)
Total: 83 miles (134 km)
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