Getting there

So my recap hasn't come nearly as quickly as I should have... I mean, I got back Sunday evening after 20 hours in the car.  But, since the trip I've been dealing with "residual effects."  I'll get into that in a later post, probably with more details than if I had gotten this whole story wrapped up sooner - so I guess maybe that is a win?

Anyway, let's start at the start of this whole adventure.

I showed up at Zac's place slightly after 6:00 am to get our boogie on.  The plan - knock out a lot of the driving on Thursday so Friday would be easier driving with some riding in there.  So we drove 13.5ish hours up to the Mackinac Bridge and scored a free camp site.  On the way there we hit a stretch of highway backwards...

It was very bizarre as one side of the highway was shut down and there was no sign of southbound traffic anywhere... made us wonder a bit how we would get home?

Anyway, once we got up to the bridge we scouted the "legit" free camp sites with numbers and all, but they were full.  So we snagged a clearly used, but less legit, site.  It was nice.  After we set up it was time to enjoy a beer and take a stroll down to the water.

We were on a lake, but not one of the great ones...

Once I got used to the sound of mosquitoes buzzing (all on the outside of my hammock) and the sound of some four legged creature rummaging in the forest not too far away, I slept great!  We woke up with the sun and checked out the beach down the road on one of those giant lakes they have up in those parts.

We stopped in for a quick breakfast before crossing the Mackinac.  The sun greeted us as we crossed.

And like that we were in the UP (Upper Peninsula).  We headed to Marquette where we got our ride on at the South Marquette Trails.

The trails were great.  They had a little something of everything, and a little something for everyone.  We weren't able to ride everything, but I think we got a good mix of what was out there by hitting Yellow, Blue/Black, and finishing on Green.

There was much more elevation there then I would have imagined, and the trail surface was an interesting mix of spots of soft sugar sand to hard pack and rocks.

Unfortunately for me, my legs were not playing nice after sitting in the car for so long, so climbing was more than a chore for me.  As Zac waited for my to catch up on the Yellow he found a friend.

It was the first porcupine he had ever seen so he was pretty psyched.

It was great riding with Zac as he was super positive and kept me going when I was feeling like my legs were done.  I think it was unanimous, we both enjoyed the Blue/Black trail the most as it was their more "technical" trail.

After our ride we enjoyed some locally caught whitefish burritos before driving on to our hotel for the night.  It was a fancy place - our bikes got to enjoy the porn tub.

After we got settled in we headed up to Copper Harbor to check out the drive time and meet up with the other Queen City folk way up north - Danger and Jim.  They had an adventure on their own and had made plenty of friends already.  We hung out for a bit before heading back to the hotel for the night....  we left before the police showed up.

The next day we "raced" and it was good.  But I'll tell you about that tomorrow.