Day 42 – Sidnaw to Marquette (T.D.: 131.5km; S.T.: 6h25min)

We were pulled out of sleep by the sounds of not-so-distant thunder this morning. Luckily, we were able to tear down the tent, make breakfast, and eat it before the rain started coming down. A small bathroom attached to the convenience store next to the campground was our shelter for a little while, but the rain soon died down enough for us to work up the courage to go out into it. What’s funny is, if it starts pouring rain while you’re ON the bikes, you don’t mind particularly. You certainly aren’t going to stop riding and take cover. But if it starts pouring rain when you aren’t on the bikes YET, then you all of a sudden become quite a wimp.

Anyway, today was a day where the rain came in waves, and couldn’t really be avoided unless you had excellent timing, so if we were to make it anywhere, we were going to have to get a little bit wet. In fact, it didn’t even rain all that much, in the scheme of things. Probably 3 or 4 hours out of 12 had actual rain coming down. That’s another thing I learned on this trip – rainy days are never quite as rainy as you imagine them to be. Enough about rain.

We had a nice picnic lunch by a river. I am sure Alex will appreciate the fact that I was hungry enough at this point to start eating without taking off my gloves, and (apparently) not even my helmet (this wasn’t staged – I actually ate like that for a few minutes).

Later, we stopped at a small bakery to find out what a pasty is (pronounced pass-tee). Turns out it is some sort of meat pie thing. We opted for the giant cinnamon buns instead.

In Ishpeming, we managed to locate a library that was actually open and had public internet, where we posted an update informing all of you folks that we were still alive and well. It was a lovely old thing, that library. When we came out of it, it was raining again though.

The rainfall increased steadily as we approached Marquette, which sits on the southern shore of Lake Superior. It deterred us from exploring the town proper, so all we really saw was box stores and rain. We ate at our old standby, Subway, and then carried on out of town to what would be our campsite for the night, a few miles away. Along the way, Caroline got a flat tire. As luck would have it, the rain stopped long enough to fix it. In fact, the evening turned out to be quite lovely, and we were able to get to our campsite, set up the tent, and even do a bit of reading in the dimming evening light before bed.

The campground was a kitschy-but-somehow-awesome affair, full of wood carvings and tiki lanterns. The rain came back after we got to bed, this time bringing violent thunder and lightning. It was a bit scary, as I remember.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 20.4km/h

Mx. Spd.: 47.0km/h

Strangest sign: One outside of a motel that said: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us see the stars” – made us feel a bit better about what we were doing, but a bit concerned for the people in the motel.