Waving Goodbye to Wisconsin
Wales to Milwaukee - 29 miles
Average Speed - 12.2 mph
It rained hard last night, but we were dry under the roof of Pat and Mary Jo.
Mary Jo insisted that we carbo-load for our big ride to Milwaukee, so she cooked up some pasta and veggies. We discussed her proposed x-country tour that Pat will join when he adds a motor to his bicycle. Like me, Pat hates hills. Even though the computer says that we have gained a total of 43,000 feet for this trip - I think that half of that was on the Baraboo day - I still do not enjoy hills one bit.
Mary Jo gave us a map so that we could negotiate Milwaukee once we got over the two trails that we would be riding today. The big surprise today was that we had a tailwind. We made excellent time into Milwaukee. Originally, we had planned on touring Milwaukee and taking the 7pm ferry to Muskegon.
When we arrived at the ferry terminal just after 11:30 and noticed that it didn’t look too convenient to get downtown, we changed our plans. As luck would have it, there was space on the 12:30 ferry. The one real advantage of this was that we wouldn’t arrive in Muskegon late and have to ride in the dark.
We save much time and stress by crossing the lake instead of trying to go around Chicago. We find it interesting that many transcontinental tourers opt to take the ferry from Manitowoc to Ludington or even cross into the UP and shoot down the state of Michigan. We don’t have any real time constraints, but crossing in Manitowoc would require a few extra days of cycling. We did run into a cyclist the other day who started north of Minneapolis went down close to Madison and then was heading to Cheboygan via the UP. The great thing about bicycle touring is that you can go in any direction that you want. I am seriously considering a suggestion that somebody who was fighting many headwinds suggested - a tailwind tour. Head in the direction opposite the wind. Now, that would be interesting and would work in certain areas like the Midwest or East, where there are lots of road options. I can’t see it working in Montana or the Dakotas. I-90 and I-94 only run in two directions.
Just beyond the dock in Muskegon is a lake front bike path, which we opted to ride to our bed and breakfast. Now, since we have written a book about bed and breakfasts, we decided this would be a good option for the night. The White Swan Inn, one of the B&B’s in our book, Bed, Breakfast & Bike is just a few miles north of here, but really too far out of our way to be practical for this trip. We are staying at the Port City Victorian, which is located not too far from the ferry and popular with people using the ferry. Several of us seemed to arrive at about the same time - shortly after the ferry arrived.
We have a comfortable room on the second floor.
Breakfast is served at 9, which will mean a late start for us. We were simply going to pass on breakfast, but the innkeeper told us that another couple would have their breakfast at 8:20 and that we could join them, but shouldn’t expect too much. Since we don’t have too far tomorrow, we will just have a late departure and will try to sleep in for once. That will be a real treat.
After we got settled, we walked to a restaurant that serves only pizza and only with certain toppings. The pizza was quite good, but we ate a little early because we had an early lunch. Later, we went to forage for snacks and pop, yes POP, which the bed and breakfast has for sale in the hallway right across from our room. This is the first time that we have seen Vernors since that Safeway in Deer Lodge, Montana.