Lake Michigan Tour Day 7: Marinette, WI to Escanaba, MI

June 25, 2022

Today was easier riding, mostly because it stayed cooler.

I’ll start on a sad note: While eating breakfast, some of the other guests were remarking at the animal across the street. It was a juvenile porcupine. I had never seen a porcupine in the wild, other than as roadkill, so I walked over to look at it. It wasn’t in good shape – seemed to have difficulty seeing, and unsteady on its feet. I would have loved to help, but how can you help an animal you can’t pick up?

I saddled up and rode over the bridge to the town of Menominee, MI. I’ll be in Michigan for the next 1.5 weeks, and won’t see Wisconsin again until the last day.

The route ended up being almost all on one road. M-35, which ran right along the lakeshore.

Back in January, when I planned this ride, I think my expectation was that every day would look like this: a road right on the lakeshore, and beautiful views of the lake. It hasn’t worked out that way, but today came the closest so far. There were homes between the road and the lake in many spots, but in others, it was like this – unobstructed lake views and a quiet road.

Halfway through the day, I stopped at a park/beach, and took a picture of the other side of Green Bay. I’m not sure if I’m far enough up, but that might be part of Washington Island over on the left.

Zooming in didn’t help much – there are so many curves to the lake-shore that it’s impossible to tell where I’m looking.

Apart from fewer people and homes, I eventually noticed the trees were changing – to mostly pine trees. This stretch of road reminded me of the part of Northern Minnesota where we used to have a cabin.

Unfortunately, the shoulder seen here shrunk by half for 20+ miles – sometimes down to 18″, and traffic was uncomfortably close. Most people moved over to the other side of the center, but couldn’t when traffic was coming the other way.

Occasionally, streams emptying into the lake crossed the highway – this picture was taken from a bridge across one of them, and captures what I think of when talking about the upper mid-west. Lush woodlands, lakes and streams.

I saw two people cycling the other way and stopped to chat. They were a retired Navy couple, and had started their trip in Logansport, IN, and were also going around Lake Michigan. Their cycle-touring was a bit different than mine – they didn’t really know where they would stop each night, instead of scheduling it all out as I do. They said their experience with Hwy 2 across the U.P. wasn’t great. Too much fast traffic and lousy shoulders. That raised my anxiety level about that day just a bit. It’s my longest mileage day of the whole tour at 88 miles, and will be a very long day with few places to stop. I gave them a few tips on where to go in Door County and moved on.

Escanaba is a small town of 12,000 with a paper mill being the largest local employer. There is a fair amount of tourism as well as people come here to camp, boat, fish, and hunt.

I got to my motel – a family-owned place that was undergoing renovation by new owners. This is the parking lot – the impression is that this is a flea-bag motel, and you’ve made a mistake stopping here.

But when you open the door to the room, it’s quite nice! The owner said they are doing the parking lot later this year, but wanted to get a significant number of the rooms renovated first. I think they are doing a good job, and wish them luck!

Best song today was easy: Tour de France by Kraftwerk. Works so well for cycling, I played it 3 times.

Stats: 55.4 Miles, 479 vertical feet, at 14.5 mph.

Tomorrow is another hop north to Manistique. It’s supposed to rain tonight, so I’m hoping it’s done by morning!

Today's ride: 55 miles (89 km)
Total: 461 miles (742 km)

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