So we decided to call today, Rest Day 3.5 and I think that’s an appropriate name – we slept late, we ate breakfast late and we didn’t have our roll out of the Iron Horse Hotel until 11 AM, whereas most long days – we’d be close to 70 miles down the road by that time. But, it was a good day.
I think Trek Travel is smart to bypass the Chicago area altogether – it could take at least 2 days to get through that mess and the inherent danger from traffic wouldn’t be worth it – and besides, who in their right mind wants to ride through the south side of Chicago and then through Gary, Indiana? I for one might have requested to exercise my 2nd Amendment Rights to take on a ride like that.
But today was an enjoyable day – and we got to experience something new altogether. First off, the Iron Horse Hotel was great. I had a huge room and a super comfy bed and last night, I didn’t have a night sweat. There was a wooden bench in my room against a wall, and I guess there was some kind of radar in the room because as I ambled my way to the bathroom at 2 AM like all 62 year old men, a little red light would pop on over the bench to remind me of its presence. Nothing like taking care of your customers.
So, we did a roll out in street clothes basically but wearing our cycling shoes for a short 3 mile ride down to the Lake Express Ferry terminal. Trek had taken care of all the arrangements and we just checked in with the ticket lady and walked our bikes onto the vessel as soon as it unloaded. I never knew that Lake Michigan was so big – 78 miles across to Muskegon. We had some wind today as well but this big fast ferry chopped right through the 3-5 foot waves out there. Lake Michigan is also deep – 330 feet in most places away from the shore.
Our ride across was 2 1/2 hours and some of us dozed off after consuming our sandwich lunches provided by our guides. I spent some time trying to size up the rest of the crowd on the ferry with us. It was mostly older folks who seemed to be traveling together and they didn’t seem to be regular “commuters” on this route. My guess is that a lot of these folks were looking for a way to spend what might otherwise be a boring Monday but one guy says “Hey Marv, let’s get the wives and take the ferry over to Muskegon and drive around for a day and come back tomorrow”. Sounds like a decent senior road trip to me – we had probably 30-40 cars and a few motorcycles on the ferry with us.
We didn’t disembark the vessel until 4 PM and now we were on Eastern Time so we had lost an hour. We had but a 37 mile mostly flat ride down to Holland and we made quick work of that and rolled into the Holiday Inn Express between 6 and 6:30. We had pizza waiting for us, but I had dinner with my classmates Mark “Bonesauce” Brick and his wife Lonnie (also a classmate) and Steve “Reffes” Steffes – don’t ask me where we derived those nicknames from because I can’t recall. It was great to see them again and they both now live in Michigan with Mark and Lonnie retired in the Upper Peninsula.
Tomorrow’s ride takes us over to Marshall, MI on a 92 miler with around 2,500 feet of elevation gain – but we have a high likelihood of both rain and headwinds so here’s hoping for dry feet and the wind at our back!
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