Un(45th)paralleled: Sleeping Bear to the Tip of the Mitten
After I left Grand Rapids, I camped on the Manistee River about an hour south of Traverse City. It rained that night and the next morning, which started a series of about 5 days of morning rain and cool (low 50s) weather that slowed my progress significantly. After a quick morning dip in the dam backwaters, I packed up and headed to Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore for the day.
Sleeping Bear/Glen Arbor
I originally planned just a quick stop off at Sleeping Bear but ended up doing a hike, then stopping at a few overlooks, and before I knew it I was running out of daylight.
The wind blowing in from Lake Michigan was so strong that I don't think I could have jumped off the edge of the dune even if I tried - would have been about 500 feet down to the water if I had
Sleeping Bear gets it's name from an old Native American legend: A mother bear and her two cubs left Wisconsin due to a famine. Though they were tired from walking and exhausted from hunger, the mother felt their only chance to survive was to swim across the lake to Michigan, where there was food. They had nearly made it to the shore when first the smaller cub, then the larger cub drowned of exhaustion and hunger. The desolate mother finished the swim and curled up on the shore where she could watch over her two dead cubs. The mother on shore was Sleeping Bear Dune (before the erosion caused by human development of the area, this dune was actually shaped like a giant sleeping Bear). The two drowned cubs were South and North Manitou Islands.
I made my way to the nearby town of Glen Arbor to hit my first - and the original - Cherry Republic. Apparently northwest Michigan is the cherry capital of America, and Cherry Republic took that abundance of cherries and made wine, pastries, candy, bbq sauce, salsa, coffee, beer, queso, tshirts, you name it. There are now 7 Cherry Republic locations as far south and east as Ann Arbor and as far north as Mackinaw City. My friend MK, who is originally from Michigan but now lives in Cleveland let me know that all Cherry Republics do free samples and that they have a passport program where you get rewards for visiting 3+ locations (no purchase necessary). Cherry Republic lived up to the hype - I got almost half a meal of free samples and had such a good time that I forgot to take pictures. And the free samples gimmick worked; I even ended up buying some cherry coffee (note: I needed coffee anyways so this saved me a trip to the grocery store).
Glen Arbor was a cute little town, it was already early evening, and I realized that I wanted a good dinner and didn’t want to drive an hour for free dispersed camping, so I swallowed my pride and paid $20 to camp at the NPS campground 1.5 miles down the road.
After setting up camp, I drove back to town for dinner at Art’s Tavern - a local institution. The Art’s Ale was great; the burger and chili did their job but nothing to write home about.
The next morning, my neighbors at the campsite invited me over for coffee and breakfast. Zack, Brittney, their son Zeke, and Brittney’s mother Sue were on a road trip from their hometown of Terre Haute, IN up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They started road tripping to/camping around national parks on the west coast during Covid and fell in love with it as a great way to see the country at a low cost, but Sue joked that she only came along on this trip to get away from her husband for a week.
Zack’s a mailman - he’s got some wild stories about his routes through the rough parts of Terre Haute. Brittney homeschools Zeke and their foster children and also started a patisserie that is getting quite popular. Brittney and Zack got into fostering because they’ve struggled to have any more children since Zeke was born (Zeke is now 6 but is so big he could pass for 10!). Currently they have 2 foster children who just came back to them for the second time after their father was killed and their mother went to prison. They said working through the traumas the foster kids bring can be difficult - for example, the 2 they have right now have seen so much violence that they try to to turn every game into guns and killing - the older one sees a play psychologist to work on this. Zack and Brittney are currently building a 40 acre farm outside of Terre Haute that they plan to move to this spring - they’re pretty excited for farm life.
Breakfast with Zack, Brittney, Zeke, and Sue changed my mind about paid campsites. Yes the conveniences of a nearby bathroom, water pump, electrical outlets, and (at fancy campgrounds) even a shower house is nice. But reflecting on my experience with Zack, Zeke, Brittney and Sue in Glen Arbor and Steve, Jason, Katie, Luke, and Sarah in West Virginia (only other paid campsite I had done on the trip) made me realize that many of the people who camp at a paid site are looking for a communal, social experience - they want to meet new people. At dispersed sites, you rarely come in contact with others. Maybe I'll be a bit more willing to pay for campsites in the future.
Traverse City/Mission Point
In Traverse City, I stopped at Cherry Republic #2, and again got enough free samples to constitute lunch. After that, per MK’s suggestion, I went out to the Mission Point Lighthouse, where I crossed the 45th parallel and officially moved closer to the North Pole than the equator.
Out on the strand at Mission Point, I met a man (never got his name) who visits the Traverse City area every year. He told me he has visited Cleveland and Akron recently on a trip to see baseball stadiums. While he enjoys the MLB, the minor leagues are his true passion. He said his favorite place to catch a game is Quad-Cities in Iowa, where they supposedly have a Ferris wheel and mote/river around the park that turns the park into an island based on the river water levels. Add that as a future stop on the odyssey.
The Northwest Coast
I followed the coast as I kept heading north. Petoskey and Charlevoix were stunning. Charlevoix in particular, I had been to a couple of times in the past, and driving through the Main Street of town brought back some bittersweet memories. I skirted just north of Harbor Springs, but thought of Shannon and Peter as I passed as that’s where they got married. Per my friend Cooper’s suggestion (you’ll meet him when I get to Denver), I stopped in a tiny town called Cross Village - and it did not disappoint.
After dinner I got back on the bike and drove through wilderness state park to a camp ground just outside of Mackinaw City at French Farm Lake. I could see the sun set over Lake Michigan reflecting off the mackinaw bridge as I rode and what a sight it was.
The campsite was on a marsh and would have had some brilliant Star views … if there had been stars out. Aside from that, the site was a hair disconcerting - I found the leg of a Barbie doll, an ear of corn, a broken pair of purple sunglasses in the fire, a broken seatbelt latch, and a few sticks of incense or giant sparklers (couldn’t tell which) - either way I couldn’t really tell what had happened at the site before I got there and am still not sure that I want to know.
Mackinaw City
I got up early the next morning to go Sunday mass at St Anthony of Padua, the Catholic Church in Mackinaw City. For such a small city, the church was packed. They had a coffee and donut social after mass, and I partook as I had not had breakfast yet. At the social, I sat with two guys in their 60s-70s and we started talking about motorcycling. One had loved touring with nothing but his sleeping bag and jetboil but had quit touring after unexpectedly getting snowed on while riding the Upper Peninsula. The other had ridden his bike through 48 states and all the Canadian provinces. He had also been in 3 accidents and broken a number of bones, but didn’t seem to regret any of it.
After the social, I rode into town and stopped at a beach.
From the beach, I went to Cherry Republic #3 to claim my reward and get my meal of free samples. As I was collecting my reward of 3 free jars of cherry jam, the cashier, Emily, told me that her husband, Will, the bartender, did some motorcycling and suggested I talk to him, so I headed back to the bar (where they do wine tastings at Cherry Republic). Will was super down to talk shop and gave me a bunch of extra free wine samples to boot. Back before he married Emily, he had driven a bike out to Arizona, base camped out there, rode the whole west coast, upgraded his bike, then road back (sounds like it took months or years). He talked about how generous strangers were: they paid for his gas when he was out of money, fed him, and gave him a place to crash when weather was bad. He also shared his top tips: first, ditch the gas station snacks and buy a mini crockpot at Goodwill (hot, hearty meals are so much more satisfying than processed stuff and you’re gonna need to occasionally stop for four hours anyways to charge your phone, write a blog, do laundry, or just get off the bike - might as well cook up a hot meal while you're at it). Second, look for storage units offering a month free then buy a cheap mattress from goodwill and base camp out of the storage unit until the free month ends. I have yet to try either of these hacks, but there’s still plenty of road trip left.
Emily and Will still live a rather nomadic life. They’re up in Mackinaw City/St Ignace (town on the other side of the Mackinac Bridge) working seasonally (part of their job benefits is that Cherry Republic pays for their campsite) and may head back south in the spring.
After Cherry Republic, I bought a ferry ticket to Mackinac Island. (Note: Mackinaw and Mackinac are both pronounced the same: Mackinaw. I did not learn this till I got to Ann Arbor and had been pronouncing Mackinac wrong for years. Don’t make my mistake). Making small talk with the bus driver on the way to the docks, I learned she had tried to leave Mackinaw City 3 times (for places as diverse as Florida and Wisconsin) but family kept drawing her back.
Waiting on the ferry to Mackinac Island
Get the low down on Mackinac Island in my next post.
In the words of Cherry Republic: Life, Liberty, Beaches, and Pie,
Special K
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