Sleepy Hollow State Park

The Apple Cider Century is on our calendar for the end of September, and we have our sights set on the metric century, which will be our longest ride yet at 62 miles. With that ride still a few weeks into the future, we're trying to make sure we put away some miles every week so we can stay in decent condition. Cindy suggested that this weekend we could go back up to Midland (see the Search for the Tridge Broll) and ride the Pere Marquette trail. We thought that would be fun since the ride would be long, smooth, and free of traffic. We checked the map, remembered it was a good hour and half away, thought about the needle on the fuel gauge in the van, and decided something local would be better.

We'd previously talked about riding up to Sleepy Hollow State Park, but it had seemed too far away. We looked again, and decided that it would now be within our range. Our expected route was pretty direct, the park is almost straight north of us, and we tweaked our route around with Google Maps to estimate a distance of 19 miles each way.

We went to Sleepy Hollow last summer with our other tandems to ride the mountain bike trails. That was some of our first riding with Quinn on the back of a tandem. Here's one of my favorites of him on the back of the Rodriguez -



Abbey and Cindy were riding the Cannondale MT800 mountain tandem back then. This is a picture of that machine, although the photo was taken back in Redmond Washington in spring 2006 -



The trails at Sleepy Hollow were pretty fun. They don't see much use, and they are maintained by mowing grass trails through the forest, much like the trail my parents have along the creek by their house. The kids really enjoyed the trails because they were fast and fun. Maybe we'll do it again someday, but right now the child stoker that had been on the Rodriguez is installed on the bigger blue Burley, and the Rodriguez is hanging in the garage, stripped of nearly all it's components.

Coming back to the present, this morning the kids were off playing and yelling after wolfing down a pile of blueberry muffins Cindy and Abbey made from a muffin kit given to us by the Dillon family in return for eating vegetables from their garden while they were vacationing in coastal New England, when we decided we should take advantage of the cool temperature and light winds and ride to Sleepy Hollow SP. We're getting better at this. We decided to do the ride around ten, changed our clothes, filled our water bottles, ate a light lunch, yelled at the kids a little, and were on the bikes a little before noon.

The first few miles of the route were quite familiar to us. We followed our old weekly route to Lake Lansing, but continued north once we'd reached the northern side of the lake, which is our usual terminus. We followed Upton Road for quite a few miles, took a short mile west on Round Lake Road, and turned back to the north on Shephardsville Road until we reached the park. The roads were in good condition, and had some nice rolling hills, with a few short, steep climbs that pleased my need to feel my thighs burn. The shoulders, where there were shoulders, were small. Traffic was light, although sometimes fast, so it was a decent ride, but one best done at times when traffic is light.

We reached the park 20 miles later at 1:30 p.m. Not a bad pace, given that we made a few stops along the way to shed layers of clothes. It was 50 degrees when we left the house, so we dressed accordingly, but the temperature was climbing into the T-shirt zone. At our 12 mph average pace, we won't be winning any high profile races in the mountains in Europe, but we are just a family of four out for a Saturday stroll on our big, steel tandems.



As we rode into the park, we saw a sign advertising a campfire program at the park campground. Raptors of Michigan, 2:00 pm. Perfect timing, we thought. The campground was just a mile or so up the road, and we arrived in plenty of time for more muffins before the program began. The park naturalist showed us the feathered wings and scaly feet of a red tailed hawk. She talked about the different kinds of raptors, and food chains, and DDT, and bioaccumulation (getting pretty close to home - or work - for me there), and then, best of all, pulled out some owl pellets for us to pick through. We found little bones, and teeth, and tiny skulls. It was great! We brought the tiny animal parts home with us in a bag in our rack trunk. On the way home, we were going over some bumps and laughing because the bumpy road was rattling our bones.

We stopped along a bridge to take picture of the lake and watch a Great Blue Heron fly low across the green layer on the water. There was interesting pile of dead bones and fur on the road, that I thought at first might one have belonged to a beaver, but decided that it was more likely the flattened remains of a large wood chuck. Cindy caught us examining it from our bicycle.



Abbey, always with her own creative perspective, took a nice picture of the lake reflected in the sky.





She thought it might be hard to tell if the picture was right-side-up or up-side-down. What do you think?

From there, our return retraced our earlier route, once again with several stops to adjust clothing for temperature regulation. It was cloudy, and we felt a few drops of water on the way back, but not enough to wet us more than our own sweat had done already. We completed the ride with an average pace of slightly under 13 mph with a little over 3 hours riding time. Not a bad day. And Cottage Inn Pizza brought us some dinner right after we got home and showered.

The campground and Sleepy Hollow State Park was thickly forested with young trees, clean and well-kept, and had nice shower facilities. Not exactly right on a sandy beach like the spot up at Lake Charlevoix, and of course it was absolutely incomparable to a secluded spot along the cold and rugged coast of the Olympic Peninsula (as a tear drips down my cheek), but it did seem like it might be fun to try a bicycle camping trip here sometime. We could probably pack a night's gear in the trailer and ride up some Saturday morning for a single night of camping.

Oh, and about that tour I mentioned last post. We've been thinking about it, and we may have come up with a "supported" alternative. Check it out here. Right now the information for 2007 tour (which just ended) is still posted, and registration hasn't opened for 2008. We're thinking it looks like a great tour for us.

An idea for next summer...

How about an unsupported bicycle tour of the upper end of the lower peninsula of Michigan? In bicycle-speak, "unsupported" refers to a tour in which you carry all of your own gear, in contrast to one in which someone provides some sort of motor vehicle support to transport your gear, a "supported" tour. There's also the "credit card" tour, in which you don't necessarily have a support vehicle, but rather than packing camping gear, you bicycle from hotel to hotel. Sometimes those are called "bed-and-breakfast" tours. Sounds nice, but not on our budget.

Anyway, I'm thinking we could start somewhere around Lake Charlevoix, or even a little further north, ride south along the interior shore of Torch Lake, through Traverse City and over to Sleeping Bear Dunes. Maybe then we'd ride back to the north along Lake Michigan to the tip of the of the Leelanau Peninsula, back down along the shore of Traverse Bay and north again to our starting point at Lake Charlevoix. Sounds like a great trip.

I haven't figured out the logistics yet. How many miles? How many days? How many miles per day? Locations of campgrounds? Where would we leave our car? Would it be better to do a loop or figure out some sort of transportation shuttle? Would the kids hate it?

I imagine maybe 25 to 50 miles per day, with each tandem bicycle pulling a gear trailer. We have one trailer, we'd need to find (or even build up) another one. I'm convinced that the trailer is preferable to loading up the bike with more racks and bags of gear. We're pretty much set up with adequate camping gear, and by using trailers we wouldn't need to buy more panniers or racks. I would swap the smallest front chainring on our tandems, currently a 30-tooth ring, for a 26 or even a 24, so that we'd have a better chance of climbing steeper hills with a load of gear.

I think it would be loads of fun. If we made sure to spend enough time swimming and building sand castles, I think the kids would like it, too.

Now that the seed is planted, let's see if it will grow...

Riding the Charx

Rode the Charx this weekend. That is, the ride around Lake Charlevoix, which is on the northwest side of Michigan's lower peninsula. The Charx Ride is a yearly club ride - this was our first year, but it was nice, so we may do it again next year.

I'm finding it hard to keep up with this blogging. It's fun and it seems like a great way to share our adventures, but perhaps I'm too verbose. It takes effort to sit down and write. I've missed a couple of interesting adventures - a trip to Chicago in mid-July, and before that another club ride - the Covered Bridge Tour - near Grand Rapids. Maybe some time I'll come back to those.

Back to the Charx. We made reservations at the campground at Whiting County Park on Lake Charlevoix. We left Friday morning with the bikes on the rack and our camping gear in the car. We were determined to do this trip on a tight budget, so we'd planned meals and packed food in the cooler for the whole weekend. Before we left, Cindy made granola, salsa (with tomatoes and peppers from our neighbor's garden), and some really wonderful zucchini bread (zucchini from the same garden).

The campground wasn't the nicest we've seen, but the location was good, and we had, we thought, one of the better sites. The campground was right on the lake, and there was a shallow, sandy shelf that extended off shore for quite a distance. Perfect for swimming. No boats were allowed inside the buoys.




We didn't take our camera to the swimming beach, so we didn't get great pictures of the kids swimming, but we spent many hours playing in and around the water. We were careful to use sunscreen, so the only sunburns occurred in those little spots we missed with the lotion - right above Quinn's shorts on his back, and in a few spots on Abbey's back where her straps were, but didn't stay. And on Cindy's butt cheeks.



Because lunch was served after the ride, but lasted only from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., we figured we needed to start as early as possible to be sure we finished in time for lunch. As with most club rides, there were several routes: a 20, 43, 62, and 105 miles. The 62 has been called the hilliest metric century (100 kilometers) in Michigan. Those riders doing the 105 got to do the 62 and then the 43, with lunch in between. We chose the 43, which did have some hills. We awoke at 5:30 a.m., to a very quiet campground, chomped down some yogurt and granola, and left the campground by 6:45. We'd left the bikes on the car overnight, and drove the 5 miles or so to the starting point. We started the ride by 7:30.

The ride started in Boyne city, at the southeast end of Lake Charlevoix. Our route took us around the lake in a counterclockwise direction. The morning air was cold. The forecast had been for a low in the upper 50s F, and I'm sure it was at least that cold. The picture below was taken just a few miles into the ride, when Quinn had started crying because his hands were cold. He was wearing sweat pants, a light jacket, with his hood under his helmet. He had light gloves, but we hadn't thought to bring his mittens. I gave him my fingerless gloves, but it didn't help much. Abbey was chilly, but didn't really complain.



Somewhere around mile 15 we reached the shore of Lake Michigan, where we followed a paved bike path west to the town of Charlevoix. Charlevoix is very nice little town on the small strip of land, split by a narrow channel of water, that separates Lake Charlevoix from Lake Michigan. I wish we'd take photos as we went through Charlevoix. It was nice, and there were lots of big yachts and nice houses. But there was a bit of traffic to deal with and we sort of rode through quickly without stopping for photos. Here's Lake Michigan:



Quinn took some pictures of the first rest stop, which was on the shore Lake Michigan. I think he took the one below. There 43- and 62-mile routes came together for the stretch along the big lake, so there were lots of riders stopped here. We saw several other tandem teams, including a family of four with a two bikes set up similarly to ours. There was also a family of three with a girl about Abbey's age on a really nice-looking, crimson Santana triple. At this stop we also ran into Abbey's gym teacher from Cornell Elementary - we knew she was an avid cyclist - probably doing the 105 twice that day.



I didn't get many riding pictures - still need a handlebar bag or some other place to put the camera for easy access. Here's a shot of Cindy and Abbey coming down a hill on one of the inland sections of the ride.



Coming into the tiny town of Ironton, we climbed a couple of pretty significant hills. On both of them, we had to gear down to our lowest available gear, and even then we were really pushing it to get to the crest. We saw a couple of riders, who appeared to be reasonably strong, dismount and walk up the hill. For riders on bicycles without a triple, or a small chainring up front, some of these hills would have been really tough.

Ironton is a tiny little town where the south arm of Lake Charlevoix meets the main body of the lake.



We took the ferry across - it was really fun. The ferry has diesel motor, but runs on cables back and forth across the lake. It carries 4 cars and whole bunch of bicycles.



We finished the ride at just about noon, easily in time for lunch. We covered just under 42 miles - we don't know what happened that other mile (even the cue sheet indicated the ride finished at 42). It went very well, aside from a cold start, I think we all had a good time.

The lunch was pretty good, with beans and salads, some barbecued stuff, including veggie burgers, and strawberry shortcake. Even with a chilly morning, by lunchtime we were so hot that frozen strawberries on short cake was a real treat!



After the ride, we went back to the campground to swim, ate some ice cream, then swam some more before we made burritos for dinner at the campground. For some reason, the kids ran around with bandannas on their heads that afternoon.



Quinn took a picture of the rest of us. And, no, the trailer in the background isn't ours. It belonged to a little girl named Kora, who had a real interest in the contents of our cooler.