Day 13, Manistique to Epoufette

In Escanaba I made a fairly stupid remark. "That tire looks fine -- it'll make it to South Haven no problem". In my defense I was looking at it in a Super 8 and not in daylight, but that's a pretty crappy defense. Eventually the tire developed holes, and the tube failed.




You can see my buddy helping me fix the tire. Unfortunately, I didn't patch this one well.

Rather than "waste time" re-patching the tube, I chose to pump it when it got low.


Here I go again.


And again. We didn't take a picture every time, but you get the point.

It was a long, long day. There were some hills, but the 20MPH headwinds were brutal pulling a parachute. Sue and I switched off every 15-20 miles.



When you're not carrying the cart, you can recover. But when the cart's on, you're struggling to make 5-7mph. So the pictures are all from the person without the cart.

The kids were fussy, not having a good time, and there weren't many places to pull off and let them stretch. US 2 is very busy.



Sue thinks the way I get on my bike is hilarious. So I mounted it gracefully, knowing she was going to take a picture.


Even with the wind, hills, noise and traffic, the natural beauty of the UP reaches out to you, takes you by the ear and says, "look over here and admire me, eh?"




You just have to love the stores: "Honest Injun Tourest Trap".

We stopped and switched the Luggage for the last time in Naubinway. One of the people at the store there told us we would find a hotel in "exactly 16 miles". Those were long, grueling miles (since I was pulling). There was a nasty hill, flat tires, headwinds were getting stronger. We stopped at a house for sale -- always dangerous to do around Sue -- and let the kids run around a bit. I was exhausted, but pumping the tire gave me an excuse not to pedal.

When you don't have the Luggage, the wind is cold and bitter; when you are pulling, the wind is a temperature relief, but the sudden gusts will stop you as if you braked.

We found a motel in Epoufette which did not pretend to have internet, and my Sprint phone did not pretend to have internet either. It was right before the Cut River Bridge, which was out.



The view from our room was lovely, though. Sue and I ate in shifts: she ran the kids around while I ate and ordered a dinner for them, then she ate while I fed them and got them ready for bed. We all dropped, exhausted, and tried not to think about the extra miles we faced the next day getting through a detour. The kids had a tough day because there wasn't any place to let them play, and we didn't have time for long stops due to our slow pace. Our day was physically tough.

61 miles, 611 total.