2nd Bike Camping Trip!

[Bicycle Belle Ding Ding!]

My first bike touring/camping adventure in July has ruined me for all else. When we got back, all I could think of was where I would go next. My son - the literal day we got home - headed for the airport and took off on a solo backpacking trip in the West. HIS tent has gotten plenty of use. Meanwhile, mine sat. 

When he returned, I gave him a week to recover and now we’re pointing our bikes north and heading to the top of the Mitten (that’s the lower peninsula, in Michigan-speak) for a few days. We will dip our tires in Lake Michigan and then in Lake Huron, when we reach Mackinac Island. Two of the Great Lakes, in as many days.

I went back to Ride with GPS, determined to have a better experience planning my route. I was set on cycleways this time, as most of our former trip had us on busy roads that were loud and scary. I had all the same problems I’d had before. I’d lose where the cycleways went when looking for points of interest on the map. Trying to route to them would lose my actual cycling route and I’d be opening Google maps and trying to switch back and forth to see around the area. It was hopeless. I threw myself on top of the bed where my husband waited and wailed, “I’m too stupid to be a bike camper - I can’t even plan my trip!!!!” 

The next day, I brought in the big guns: Pamela Murray. She has never turned down a Zoom call about bike topics, ever. She filled in the missing pieces I needed and now the clouds have lifted and I might not be too dumb to be a bike camper after all. The biggest “AHA!” was that I did not realize you can toggle maps on Ride with GPS. You can switch to a Google map view so you can see around you - food, restrooms, hotels, sites of interest… Once I could see THAT a lot of other things fell into place. The control points remain finicky, but I understand those, too. You can split the route, add your own points of interest…so many great perks and I finally see why everyone loves the program.

We are riding from Charlevoix on the Little Traverse Wheelway and catching the Northwestern Trail up to Mackinaw City. From there, we take the ferry to Mackinac Island. My son has never been, so he’ll get to see how quaint and lovely it is, plus we’ll ride the one and only car-free highway in the United States, which circles the island. We’ve got camping reservations at 2 campgrounds, so we’ll get to use our gear again. It will be a great send-off before I have to part with him at the start of the fall semester again.

L

[Leah Peterson]

On Aug 8, 2025, at 12:44 PM, Bicycle Belle Ding Ding! <jonasa...@gmail.com> wrote:

My first bike touring/camping adventure in July has ruined me for all else. When we got back, all I could think of was where I would go next. My son - the literal day we got home - headed for the airport and took off on a solo backpacking trip in the West. HIS tent has gotten plenty of use. Meanwhile, mine sat. 

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[Steven Sweedler]

Leah, consider buying a Delorme Gazeteer for Michigan as a fallback in case your electronics falter. Carrying the relevant pages has no downside in terms of weight or bulk. 

Steven Sweedler
Plymouth, New Hampshire

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[Jay]

Two bike trips with your son in one summer, that's like winning the lottery!  Can't wait to read about this experience.  I've always wanted to ride up that part of Michigan, looks remote and beautiful.

The first map, Ontario side, shows Orangeville, I'm 40 minutes south of there!  One day I want to ride up to Tobermory, take the ferry to Manitoulin Island, and back.  Maybe I'll keep going northwest before heading south through Michigan and back home.  Would make for a nice retirement gift (years away!).

[Leah Peterson]

Say the word, Jay! We’ll plan a ride through Michigan and invite all our pals! 

Yes, two trips with my son is wild, WILD, I tell you! 

Today on the women’s ride I was telling Katie (the only other woman my age in the group) about wanting a riding partner for my adventures (these kids are leaving and I can’t count on THEM) and she said, “Let’s do a ride out east.” So as of now, we’re doing the GAP this fall! My bike life is suddenly so rich!!!!

L

On Aug 8, 2025, at 7:55 PM, Jay <jason....@gmail.com> wrote:

Two bike trips with your son in one summer, that's like winning the lottery!  Can't wait to read about this experience.  I've always wanted to ride up that part of Michigan, looks remote and beautiful.

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[Tom Goodmann]

++++ "brought in the big guns: Pamela Murray." :)  

I'm hesitant to say this out loud: Michigan is an underestimated place to live if you like to play outside. (cycling, hiking, sailing, camping, fishing, hunting, etc etc)

It has also produced some very fine writers who draw on its wonders.

Tom

Atlanta (not for much longer; heading north)

[Leah Peterson]

Tom, how north will you come? Because I’m hoping it’s within driving distance of me! Come enjoy this underestimated place on some Riv Rides! Bring a fishing pole! Hurry up and get here before spring so you’re poised for these adventures. 

Pam Murray is the big guns. You’ve met her - what can she not do? 🤩 We’ll invite her north, too.

L

On Aug 9, 2025, at 8:14 PM, Tom Goodmann <tgoo...@gmail.com> wrote:

++++ "brought in the big guns: Pamela Murray." :)  

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[Steve]

My wife and I have been hauling our travel trailer - and bikes - from Western North Carolina up to the Straits for the past four years, and are planning to do it again in late September. It's a great region for bicycling (and kayaking/canoeing, hiking the shoreline, and you name it).  It's a bit of a nostalgia thing for me as I spent time camping, biking and fishing in the region 40 - 50 years ago when I lived in Indiana.  Happily, it's not changed much over the decades. The Northwestern Trail is nice, but so are many of the lightly traveled back roads. 

Leah, judging from your GPS map it looks like you'll be camping at Mackinaw Mill Creek. If you've not been there before -it's an excellent campground. I'm planning to reprise a ride I did last yer from the campground to Sturgeon Bay and back. Lake Huron to Lake Michigan sounds impressive, but it's just 20 miles each way for 40 roundtrip. I'll take the trail south to a Gill Road at Lake Paradise (aka Carp Lake) that cuts west to the Bay. Enjoy your bike packing adventure!

Steve in AVL 

On Friday, August 8, 2025 at 8:24:38 PM UTC-4 Bicycle Belle Ding Ding! wrote:

[Tom Goodmann]

Leah and all, 

Heading to the great Midwest, to be sure. For the present, the Madison area, which will give me access to the library to prepare for some academic events this fall, and access to riding and fishing in the Driftless.  And then I will search out a home from which to roam and ride, whether in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa (with visits to Michigan). I'm eager to have the bikes set up in one place again.

Be sure that I will have a bike and a fly rod with me! I wish it were more economical to ferry across Lake Michigan from Wisconsin, but am glad at least that routes are maintained during summer.  

Tom

[Leah Peterson]

So exciting, Tom. You’re going to be at such a haven for adventure-having. I’ll be seeing more of you! Here’s to the great Midwest. Hurry, hurry.

Leah

On Aug 10, 2025, at 7:37 AM, Tom Goodmann <tgoo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Leah and all, 

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[Tim Zowada]

Welcome to the neighborhood!  Don't hesitate to contact me if you get stuck for anything. I live 8 miles south of Petoskey.

Tim Z.

[Lucia Matioli]

Now I wanna move there too!

;)

Lucia Matioli

Sr Creative Consultant

goodthinkingco.com

linkedin.com/in/luciamatioli/

              

   

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[Leah Peterson]

Bring your fancy Homer, Lucia!

On Aug 10, 2025, at 11:38 PM, Lucia Matioli <lucia....@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Lucia Matioli]

Oh man! Thats so tempting. How about a plan for next year? I’d be so down. 

🥰

L

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[Pam Bikes]

Leah, I'm so excited for you.  Now you know why you camp.  The route looks great!  

And yes, I love to help out any way I can.  

I can't wait to hear all about your adventure.  

I love paper maps.  It would be nice to see a page.  I like a street atlas.  Is it that detailed?  If anyone has one, please post one picture.

On Friday, August 8, 2025 at 12:57:05 PM UTC-4 Steven Sweedler wrote:

[Leah Peterson]

2nd-ever Mother-Son Bike Camping trip is underway! The weather is IFFY, my friends, but we are optimistic. We don’t know why. We are novices, and we are excited, and not even the lightning can discourage us. (Ok, we won’t ride in lightning, but it made this post more thrilling so I said it.)

John Lenin (🙄) is in the driver’s seat, I am in charge of music and photography, and both of us are complaining about the other’s prowess in these assigned roles. 

The bikes are trashed. So much for living those drivetrains. Horrors. Check out the stuff we gotta strap on these bikes! We tossed it all in, little preparation this time. 

The plan was to ride from Charlevoix to Mackinac Island and back, with 2 nights of camping. A local to the area (whom I have never met but “know” from online), John Williams, who has the purplest purple Platypus, has convinced us we should come to his turf in Traverse City and add on a ride with him. So we are! Because I am free-spirited, which is a new thing I’m doing! 

We’ll acquire some rust on this bike trip as the downpour has been relentless the first 75 miles of our drive, and continuing. WE ARE OPTIMISTIC that the rain will be done by the lunch hour, which is when we meet our host for the Traverse City ride.

Pam Murray sent a new thing I’m supposed to try. I’m still debating discussing it here; it is borderline inappropriate but ALSO riotously funny to me. She sent me a P Style, which you RivSisters can find for sale at Riv’s website. The trial run was…I don’t know if I’m going to tell you.

I’ll report back as the adventure unfurls.

Leah

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 11, 2025, at 2:45 PM, Pam Bikes <pamlike...@gmail.com> wrote:

Leah, I'm so excited for you.  Now you know why you camp.  The route looks great!  

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[Pam Bikes]

I know everything will work out.  I'm sure you have the seatcover on the saddles, right?  

[Leah Peterson]

Wow, what an amazing trip. 

No one really likes listening to people droning on about their trips, so I’ll try to be palatable.

1. Learn to pivot.

I had my route and plan inked. Got an email from John Williams, Traverse City, MI. He basically said, “You have to come here and ride the best trails in the state. Put this on the itinerary. You can camp at my place right on the water. When can you get here?” 

We’ve never met, by the way. But this is how friendly Michiganders are. I declined. Told him I was going via another trail. Traverse City wasn’t on my route. The offer stands, he said. 

Why did I feel like I would be missing out?

2. Run off with strangers from the Internet.

My son wanted to see Traverse City. John seemed like a vivacious, nice man. He has a purple Platypus. Green flags.

Ok, I told him. I’m heading your way for a ride on our first day.

Tracy, another stranger from the internet, got word. “Hey, wait, I live 15 miles from Traverse City,” she said. “Are you seeing John,” she wanted to know. 

YOU KNOW HIM, I said. 

So E, Tracy, John and I gathered our Rivs, made introductions and set off on a RivRide on the famous TART trail. We pedaled with John to a winery, where he treated us to lunch and a “frosé” while we dined and sipped amongst the vineyards. 

3. Chuck your route, the locals know best.

Show me your route, said John. Well, he said, you COULD go that way, but you’d have a much more scenic experience if you went THIS WAY. We wrote down his instructions. He had all the roads committed to memory. Eat here. Visit there. Make sure you see this, he said.

We did. We pedaled along indescribable beauty. We stopped, soaked it in, drank it up, continued on. I was drunk on it. (It wasn’t the frosé!) Locals wanted to know where we were going. They pointed out things that might interest us along the way. We found an oasis in the Tunnel of Trees - the most rustic, charming coffee shop; when we pulled over there was a pile of 20 bikes belonging to a hoarde of darling college boys on a RA team building trip. They were chatty. One had some cramping so I fixed him up with some electrolytes. “Bikers are way nicer than joggers,,” he observed. We were faster than them, even though we were fully loaded and they were fully supported. They cheered for us at every encounter, and we did for them, too (we were all going to Mackinaw City). 

Our bikes were a blessing, never giving us any trouble, keeping us in perfect comfort the entire time. Our gear was also great, though E’s tent did flood in a nasty thunderstorm that blew over our campsite. He had to wait until the rain ceased enough for him to get out of the tent and begin bailing. He was ankle-deep in water.

We talked a little but mostly rode in companionable silence, each listening to a audiobook. E loved being able to check out with a book; he said biking takes no effort when you have a good book. He was sad when we parked the bikes.

Nobody locks a darn thing at the top of the Mitten (that means Michigan’s lower peninsula, if you don’t know). Not vehicles or houses and not bikes. We walked away from our bikes all the time and nothing ever went missing. We locked if we could, but it was hardly necessary. One time we pulled off the highway, ditched the bikes on the side of the road and went swimming at Sturgeon Beach. The bikes were just as we left them, all our gear intact. E even left his bike gloves at the restroom on Mackinac Island. When we came back an hour later, they were just where he left them. I lost my Air Pods and had to backtrack 15 miles (by car, as this was at the end of the trip) to where Find My located them. A nice Michigander in the campground was holding them for me.

We made it to the ferry in Mackinaw City and sailed to Mackinac Island. We rode the only car-free US highway in the nation. We did some exploring and then sailed back to the city and rode 60 miles back to my truck for the drive home.

I spent the morning today washing my tent, my clothes and my bike. I got it lubed and cleaned up and the leather all polished. The bikes were caught in rain more than once, so they needed it. Everything is unpacked and now all I can think about is when can we do this again?

If you can’t get through this wall of text, below is the Reel I made of the trip for Instagram. 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNY6zFVuPml/?igsh=

As always, thanks so much for your suggestions and help and goodwill!

Leah

On Aug 12, 2025, at 12:07 PM, Pam Bikes <pamlike...@gmail.com> wrote:

I know everything will work out.  I'm sure you have the seatcover on the saddles, right?  

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/a318b41d-2407-4356-91f4-8c7f862aeda1n%40googlegroups.com.

[Mathias Steiner]

Well, yeah.

That's the most beautiful area in lower Michigan. I think. 

Troll-land, you know? Because we live "under the bridge." 

>> swimming at Sturgeon Beach

That sounds like the beach my friends call "Sturgeon Bay Corner" because the road makes a 90-degree turn inland. 
It looks like this. 
Riv content guaranteed by Sackville XS or whatever it's called toolbag... plus any decent tourer is Rivish by definition.

The sign says

"Dogs prohibited on Wilderness State Park beaches April 15 - Aug ***" so this is already part of Wilderness, which covers a huge area.T

This is from the 2023 edition of the DALMAC bike ride from Lansing to the Bridge.

How come you haven't signed up for that yet? 

This year's ride starts Wednesday week. It's 32 years since I first rode it, and I haven't missed many.

I'd posit you can't call yourself a Michigan cyclist without trying it some time.

Just last week I was talking to an old friend and he reminded me how we rode this in 1995, and we had to stop about 10 miles down the road because everybody was given a century pin... there were some detours that day and the total mileage went beyond a hundred miles. Fun times, half a lifetime ago.

>>   each listening to a audiobook.

There's the age difference. 
I'm 61 and can't even conceive of wanting to bike with any kind of sound track, except what's in the air around me.

cheers -mathias

[Leah Peterson]

Mathias, aw, man, I think you’re right and I got the name wrong - it’s Sturgeon Bay. Our route had us taking a different way, but our serve at Legs Inn insisted we go this way and see the beach. She called it the prettiest beach she knows. I’m always scared to change the plan, but the intrepid 19 year old was won over by her description and it turned out to be his favorite feature of our ride.

See how we just left the bikes unattended? And went swimming.

Friends, here is what Mathias is talking about, re: DALMac: https://dalmac.org/

I don’t know why I’ve never thought to ride it. I suppose I only just started doing bike overnights in the last year and a half. This would have seemed like too long to be gone, but now…

You should give audiobooks/podcasts a try on a scenic bike ride, age gap or not. We were on trails nearly every mile, so we weren’t on high alert for cars, and it is nice to zone out while the wheels turn. In fact, this tour was SUCH an improvement from our last BECAUSE there were no cars. On that tour, we rode 55 mph 2 lane highways along Lake Erie and the noise from passing traffic and the fear it strikes into one’s heart when there is little to no shoulder…well, it took a toll. We were tired of being on high alert, unrelated to whatever physical demands there were.

I’ll agree with you that it is the prettiest part of lower Michigan - the area of Traverse to the top of the Mitten. I really have not ventured past the island into the UP yet. I know I need to get there, but it seems so remote for bike touring…

L

On Aug 15, 2025, at 9:14 PM, Mathias Steiner <mathiass...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, yeah.

That's the most beautiful area in lower Michigan. I think. 

Troll-land, you know? Because we live "under the bridge." 

>> swimming at Sturgeon Beach

That sounds like the beach my friends call "Sturgeon Bay Corner" because the road makes a 90-degree turn inland. 
It looks like this. 
Riv content guaranteed by Sackville XS or whatever it's called toolbag... plus any decent tourer is Rivish by definition.

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<sturgeon01.jpg>

[John Robert Williams]

Leah, thanks so much for your pivot!

There’s still a LOT of trails around TVC to explore and delight!

Here’s the 4 Rivs, pre ride. Such a delight!

Come camp in the yard next time!

JRW

TVC, MI USA

(And 3/4’s of a dog)

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[Dorothy C]

I downloaded and zoomed in on this last photo, so good. 

Tracy, your shirt is fantastic. I am in SoCal and I often point out to my colleagues who are getting into stifling cars at the end of a summer workday, when they are concerned about me riding in the heat, that I get an instant breeze getting on my bike. 

[Jay]

I think the US starts college earlier than Canada though I could be wrong, for college, but Leah, I say squeeze in another short trip with your son; you're on a "role" 

[Leah Peterson]

This is our last weekend with him, Jay. I gotta deliver him next Saturday, so I don’t think we’ll be able to do another in time! But, maybe there’s a fall trip we could sneak off to…

On Aug 16, 2025, at 3:38 PM, Jay <jason....@gmail.com> wrote:

I think the US starts college earlier than Canada though I could be wrong, for college, but Leah, I say squeeze in another short trip with your son; you're on a "role" 

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[Ryan]

So your son must start on Monday maybe....? My MA program at University of Winnipeg starts Sept 2

But back on topic...fall is a great time for a trip ...less traffic, bugs....and beautiful fall colors!I would definitely sneak out if I were you :)

[Josh C]

Leah, 

That's awesome. I completed my first overnight trip this summer. It was disrespectfully hot and humid, but fun. I bought the same bag liner that you mentioned in your packing list, which was still too hot to sleep in, but it seems nice. I'm planning a couple more S24Os before the end of next month, and then I'm going to solo tour the Ohio to Erie Trail. I'll report back. It'd be too hot around here to enjoy a long trip during the summer. End of summer/fall is great. 

Josh, who's currently too hot just typing this, in Indy.