MUP Day 6 - Newberry to St. Ignace

Last day of the MUP! Saturday, 26 July, we would ride 66 miles to reach our starting point in St. Ignace. Although the tour organizers recommended an especially early start to avoid traffic on a busy road we would have to travel due to a construction-related detour, we got an especially slow start. The slowness of our start was due to piles of wet gear and having had to stay indoors the previous evening to avoid the nasty weather. Our slowness felt even worse because it seemed that everyone else managed to leave early. We really weren't in a hurry though, because we knew we'd make it to St. Ignace in plenty of time, and we didn't have to worry about setting up camp once we got there.

We packed our wet gear and pulled on our wet shoes - yuck. Instant wet socks. But, the weather was beautiful, with cool air and a sky mostly sunny. The potentially busy stretch of road had almost no traffic and was downhill, so it didn't seem bad at all. It was fast, so Quinn and I found it to be quite a rush!

The early part of the day was the sunniest, and was just beautiful. For the first time on the entire tour, we even had a tail wind. The terrain was rolling with a few very steep hills. Up and down.



Look at that blue sky!



We had some cloud cover move in later in the morning, but we still had a good time, riding cautiously and responsibly at all times.



We had nice lunch stop at McGowan's Family Restaurant in Trout Lake. They had a little grassy area in front of their motel that made great bicycle parking - I wish I'd gotten a picture all the bikes there when we arrived. We were the last to leave, after a really nice lunch from their soup and salad bar. Quinn and I had pulled off our socks, which had soaked up water from our wet shoes, to let them dry during lunch. Abbey rested while we put on our still-wet shoes and socks.



The rest of the ride went quickly and smoothly, although I think the long days and short nights were adding up for Quinn. He's used to getting a few more hours sleep every night than he got on any night on this trip. The first sign was at lunch when we was just unable to make up his mind about what he wanted to eat. Most of us had finished our lunch before Quinn even decided on his. A slice of fresh raspberry pie carried him for a couple of hours.

About two hours out of St. Ignace, Quinn remembered the frisbee we'd left in DeTour Village after our first night. That loss tipped him over the edge, and he began to cry. I don't think he fully stopped crying until the ride was over, with a possible exception of the time he nearly fell asleep on the back of the tandem. At that point, we stopped for a snack and tried to cheer him and wake him up. It was a long, long week for such a little guy, and he and his big sister had done a great job on the whole trip!

We reached St. Ignace around 4 p.m. We were some of the last riders into St. Ignace. Our total mileage for the trip, based on Cindy's odometer, was 319 miles.

Here's a picture of Grandma and Grandpa dismounting their Burley at the very end of the tour.



When we arrived, Quinn told Fred, the tour director, about the frisbee he had lost, and Fred pulled out frisbee that he found along the way, and gave it to Quinn! No, it was not the one Quinn had lost.

We loaded our gear into the mini-vans, put the blue Burleys on top, showered, said good-bye to some of the other riders and Fred, before setting off on the drive home. We were happy and sad and tired. It was a good feeling.