Corner To Corner - Chatper 6, To The Top Of Michigan

It was a beautiful sunny morning when we rolled North out of Holland, Michigan a little before 8am. We thought t-shirts would be sufficient, but after a couple of miles we decided we needed our light leather jackets again. We are definitely getting further north. Holland is a tacky little place on the shore of Lake Michigan – made to look like a Dutch town (Holland – get it?) Lots of faux windmills and giant wooden shoes. I’m sure it’s popular with the elderly lady bus tour set. We rolled out late again this morning – it’s getting hard to get up in the morning – we’ve been riding hard for six days now, and we’ve never ridden six days straight without taking a break, and I could use one.

One of our morning biker rituals is a morning “good luck” tap – where Tony and I bump fists before throttling up and moving out. Well I bought some new fingerless gloves at the Goldwing rally yesterday back in Ohio – and as you can see no self-respecting Goldwing rider would ever wear them – they are too “motorcycle-ey” for them. However, the little spikes gave Tony a nasty jab this morning, so maybe they aren’t such good luck after all.

We headed up US-31, which is another of these US highways that has been turned into a pseudo freeway – with a speed limit of 70mph that even the trucks exceed. I’m a little disappointed in the Harley-Davidson Road Atlas, which has been more or less our Bible on this trip. It shows this as a designated motorcycle ride with great scenery and places to visit. I was expecting to have some vistas of Lake Michigan and some cute towns – and what we got was miles of faux freeway, no views of the lake, and long strung out towns with slow traffic.

As we were rolling through Manistee, Michigan, we saw a group of three riders in a motel parking lot – two of them roared out in front of us, the third got caught behind us. After a few miles when it was safe we waved him up to join his group, and he paused and asked me where we were going. I told him the Upper Peninsula, and, as good Harley riders do when going the same way, invited us to ride along with them, and we accepted their offer. Well, we didn’t have much of a choice, since we couldn’t pass them. A few more miles down the road, he backed off and asked me where we had come from, and when I told him he said “no shit!” and rode up to talk to his buds. Another mile or so and he drifts back and says they are stopping for lunch in Traverse City and wanted to know if we would like to join them, and I said OK. Now these guys most definitely need to take one of Professor Tony’s classes in Group Riding, and their leader needs to take Dr. Gardner’s class in how to be a Road Captain. These guys had no idea how to ride in formation – let alone use hand or even TURN signals! The next thing we knew they were turning in – without warning – into a Harley dealership in Traverse City.

It was at this point we all got to introduce ourselves. The three all work together – as Prison Guards – at the State Pen in Muskegon, and were off on a four-day trip to the Upper Peninsula. When they heard where Tony and had been and were going, Greg, Jerry and Brock were a bit shell shocked and in awe. In fact one of them had just bought his bike a few weeks ago. We went into the dealership and all bought shirts (number three on this trip if you are counting). When they asked if we liked Mongolian BBQ, Tony practically ran to his bike to get going. We motored up the road to a nice joint and had a great lunch and learned that the prison portrayed on the TV show “OZ” is not at all realistic, and all of them were quite relieved to find out I was not a defense attorney. All had taken the job when there was nothing else to do after high school. The economy in Michigan is still not what it is elsewhere in the country.

After lunch, their “Road Captain” Greg took off and violated Road Captain 101 – make sure your group is ready to go with you, and do not make a right turn unless the entire group can go with you. He rode alone for 20 miles in beach town traffic before we could rejoin him. We stopped in a nice park on the shore of the lake for a break, and had a chance to talk more and pose for a picture. When we left the park, I was able to maneuver myself into being the lead rider, which if nothing else made me feel safer since I wasn’t having to watch for sudden movements and turns on their part.

When we got to the top of Michigan at Mackinaw City, just before the bridge to the Upper Peninsula, we stopped again at the Harley Dealership there and all bought shirts (four for us now on this trip.) They were going to take a different road at the other end of the bridge so we said our good byes there, and although they invited us to go with them up to Sault Ste. Marie on the Ontario border – and we were tempted because we were having a good time with these guys – we declined and decided to keep heading West.

That’s the thing about Harley riders – you are instantly part of a bigger family of riders, and its rare that a group of Harley riders won’t ask you to join up with them for a ride. You get to meet the most interesting folks, and its one of the true joys of riding.

Now the Mackinac bridge is really spectacular – a high suspension bridge that goes over the strait between Lakes Michigan and Huron and connects to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is roughly two miles long. It’s also very windy and if you are afraid of heights, you don’t want to take this bridge. The views were unbelievable (as were the antics of our three new friends in weaving in traffic and taking pictures, and all to soon we were at the toll both. We waved goodbye again as Tony and I curved onto US-2 West and they headed up north on I-75.

US-2 runs due west along the shore of Lake Michigan, and this is what I was expecting the road up from Holland to be like – miles of shoreline. This road is not highlighted in the Harley Road Atlas – a serious mistake in my book. What we were not expecting is a towering thundercloud ahead of us. About 40 miles down the road we pulled into a rest area to answer the call of nature, and I thought maybe I’d put on my rain gear just in case – we’d seen a number of bikers heading east with their gear on. Just as we pulled it out of the saddle bag it started to sprinkle, and by the time we got into the gear it became a full-fledged downpour like what we’d seen in Florida. We thought it might be best to wait it out so we sat on the front porch of the log cabin rest area building and watched the rain come down. A lightning strike across the parking lot scared the bejeezus out of us as well, and we were glad to have stayed put. The storm was moving west to east, so we assumed it would let up, but while we waited we called down the road to get a hotel room and to catch up with friends and family back home. Ain’t cell phone technology wonderful!

After an hour the rain had slowed to a trickle and we decided to head down the road before it got much later. Forty very wet miles later we pulled into Manistique, Michigan and a Quality Inn. The storm had knocked out the cable and thus the Internet connection, but we were glad to get inside and out of the rain gear that is only 75% waterproof.

We’ll keep heading West on US-2 tomorrow – and could, if we wanted to, stay on US-2 all the way home to Seattle. We won’t of course, but I’ve always thought it would be fun to ride from Key West north to Bangor Maine on US-1, then turn West on US-2 to head home – or maybe to US-101 and ride down the coast of California, and back to Florida on US-98. As you know by now, I find highway numbers somewhat magical – especially when I can connect them with a place that means something to me – like home. I’ve been thinking of home a lot today – and to be honest, while we are having a great adventure out here on the road – the call of home is being heard faintly in the background.