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...