We had perfect sleeping weather last night with cool and dry air. We woke up at 6 am and were on the road at 7 am, into Frankenmuth. We rode down the main drag past fancy hotels, Bavarian themed businesses and buildings. At the south end of town there was a massive, enclosed water park, the World’s Largest Christmas Wonderland, and a chapel. I’ve never seen anything like it!
Past the spectacle, we rode south on quiet M-83 for several miles, then turned east on several county roads to Millington. In town, we found a cafe with an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet for a mere $7.50. Score! Well fed (especially me), we rode southeast on the paved Southern Links Trailway to Otter Lake (see photo). When the trailway ended, we biked east on M-90 into a headwind for 13 miles to North Branch, then onward for another 15 miles to Brown City. We ate lunch on a shaded bench in front of a closed antique store. Eastward we traveled for another 10 miles, into the wind, past lots of farms on flat terrain. The main crops were corn and soy beans, with some winter wheat, sugar beets, and pastures cut for hay- with the cut grass drying on the fields.
We turned south on M-19 and zoomed along for 6 miles with a tail wind to Yale. Even though it was only 3 pm, we stopped at the Sweet Dreams Motel, because we didn’t want to ride another 22 miles (mostly into the wind) to a motel in Marrysville. At Sweet Dreams, we met Janet who, with Steve, has spent the last 11 months touring the US on their electric bikes. We appreciated the cooler weather, the light to moderate traffic, and the flat biking today. Tomorrow we enter Canada!
July 07, 2019 - Frankenmuth, MI to Yale, MI : 62.5 miles
