Day 27: The Crossing

 

Green Bay to Manitowoc Wi - Ludington MI , 47 miles, (107 miles if you count the “ferry assist”; we’d like to but we won’t)

We left Green Bay this morning and bicycled to Manitowoc, on the shores of Lake Michigan, much of it on the Devil River Trail. We usually shy away from trails billed as dirt and gravel but took a chance this morning in part because we thought it may offer some shelter from unfavorable winds. We were right and the trail ride was a lot of fun. We battled some headwinds getting into Manitowoc but it was a short enough distance that our complaints were limited.

So this leaves the big question of why we bicycled all the way across Wisconsin only to be left at the shores of a lake that we can’t pedal across.  A word or two about cross country cycling routes may be helpful here. There are, of course, numerous ways to bicycle across the country, but two routes are frequently sited. The southern route starts in Southern California and makes it way to northern Florida. The northern route, which we have followed so far - at least in spirit - starts in the Pacific northwest and makes its way along the states that we have traveled through. And, continuing to the northeast usually involves some hopscotching over one or more of the Great Lakes as well as some travel in Canada (in order to maintain some semblance of a direct line).  Travel in Canada was foreclosed to us this year because of pandemic-related restrictions so we opted to angle down to Annapolis. We could have maneuvered around the lakes but wanted to make sure that we didn’t get tangled up in the congestion of Chicago, Gary IN, and the like. So we decided to stay north as long as we could and that involved traveling across Lake Michigan.

We did not make this decision lightly, as the rest of our journey has been self propelled.  We even considered putting Mike’s rowing background to work for us and searched for a rowing vessel but to no avail. We opted for the next best thing: the SS Badger, a ferry that runs from Manitowoc WI to Ludington MI.  We have to admit that there was another motivation at work here as well.  Today is Mike’s birthday and, earlier in the trip, Mike confided that he had long wanted to take a ferry ride across Lake Michigan on his birthday.  Well, the stars seemed to have aligned and we couldn’t pass the opportunity up. 

The ride on the Badger was especially memorable as during three hours of the four-hour crossing we were treated to a loud emcee hosting “Badger Bingo” complete with a generous serving of very bad (i.e., corny) jokes. It was so Midwestern, it was so wholesome, it was so family friendly…it was so very trying.  And, to make things worse, we didn’t win a single game. 

So here we are in Michigan, back in the eastern time zone, and ready to go. After a celebratory birthday dinner for Mike at a fast food restaurant (only the best for Mike), we began planning our route east.  We got our first look at the map of Michigan on the ferry, provided to us by the Badger’s “Cruise Director,” and realized that we have some work to do. The big booming thunderstorm that is blowing through Ludington now should be cleared up by morning and we’re hoping that we’ll have tomorrow’s route sorted out by then as well.