Tag Archives: Michigan

In Midland, we rode into downtown past the Midland County Courthouse, which was unlike any other courthouse I’ve ever seen or imagined (see photo). Herbert Dow, founder of Dow Chemical (headquartered in Midland), ponied up the money for the arresting edifice in the 1920s.

Hundreds of resting mayflies hung on the walls of the store (see photo). Thousands of their dead comrades littered the concrete below. Mayfly larvae live in lakes and rivers. The adults emerge in summer, sometimes often swarms of millions. The adults mate, the females lay their eggs in water, and the males look for another mate. The adults live for only one or two days then die.

Onward we rode to the south for more climbs, one of which featured a scenic overlook of Lake Michigan (see photo). A man from Eritrea congratulated us on attempting to ride across the US. We zoomed down to Arcadia, bought a cold drink, and ate lunch on a shaded picnic table.

We continued south, past Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and saw the spot where the energetic tourists climb to the top of the dunes (see photo). Curiously, we found few tourists in Empire but we bought food and checked out the Visitor Center. We got back on the bike for 5 hard miles to the campground. We got a large, shady tent site in open forest. It was another wonderful day!

Happily, the “Little Traverse Wheelway” bike path allowed us to avoid busy US Hwy 31 for 26 foggy miles to Charlevoix. The photo shows Betsy at the southern edge of Petoskey, where the lake almost reaches the bike path. We passed by the site of the former Big Rock Point nuclear power plant, now demolished.