Whew – what a day! I don’t have many pictures for two reasons. One, I wasn’t near the lake much, and pictures of fields aren’t very exciting. Two, I spent pretty much the whole day with my head down, fighting the wind. It was 15-20mph in my face the whole day.

I headed south through downtown Charlevoix. I learned why US-31 goes right through town – there isn’t anywhere else for it to go. There is a bridge crossing the canal from Lake Michigan, but then inland Lake Charlevoix is HUGE, and it would be far too expensive to build a much longer bridge to make 31 go anywhere else. The lady running my B&B had some fun stories about the bridge occasionally getting stuck for several hours and traffic backed up for miles, and even school-children unable to get home from school on the school-bus. The trip around the lake to get to the other side of the bridge is something like 66 miles!

The wind….I haven’t had a day like this since the first day of the Tour de Nebraska last summer! It wasn’t 100 degrees, but every hill was a slow, tortuous climb. Every downhill was relief, but on some, if I stopped pedaling, I stopped moving!

My route drifted on and off of Hwy 31. When I was on it, the shoulder was usually good, but I ran into a several-mile stretch where the shoulder went from 10 feet to 4 feet – traffic was passing far too closely.

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Here’s a shot from a side-road that ran past some nice orchards – I can SEE Lake Michigan over there, but I’m nowhere near it. Plus next to open fields like this one, there is NOTHING to block the wind.

I then figured out that my route would be shorter ON Hwy 31. The GPS was taking me off at right-angles, then turning to get back on a couple miles later – this was increasing my distance just to keep me off the highway.

I decided to stay on 31 for most of the rest of the day. This worked fairly well, but I think I had to climb some taller hills than originally planned.

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Eventually, a few miles short of Traverse City, I passed a park, right on the lake.

At a town called Acme, the shoulder on US-31 just flat out disappeared, and turned into a two-lane highway. There was enough traffic that I was holding people up, and got honked at a few times. Not sure what they thought I should be doing or where I should be. Sorry I made you 30 seconds late to somewhere!

Mercifully, just as I hit the city-limits of Traverse City, a trail appeared, which paralleled 31, but was just for bikes and pedestrians. Hallelujah! The rest of the ride in was still windy, but less dangerous, and I got to my hotel around 4pm.

I believe the wind situation will change for tomorrow – anything but another day of that!

Standout music track for today was One Summer’s Day by Joe Hisaishi from the Spirited Away soundtrack. Calmed me down and helped me realize that the wind is just another obstacle, but won’t keep me from reaching my goal.

Stats: 51.1 miles (my map said 60, but I think taking 31 as a shortcut helped cut the miles), 2252 vertical feet, and average speed of 11.1mph (!).

Tomorrow goes further south to Manistee. A lot of the route is inland, so don’t expect many lake pictures until near the end of the ride.