Day 18 – July 5: To Petosky State Park. Hills!

written by Jeff

30 miles

After a day of playing in the water, enjoying fantastic food, and two nights sleeping in beds at the Leonard family cottage at Mullett Lake, nobody wanted to leave. It was a slice of paradise during our journey. We finally got moving after a filling breakfast of pancakes, prepared by Angela’s uncle Paul, and hit the road around 10:15 AM.

Hills, hills, hills!  Northwest Michigan has a lot of hills! As a result, the trip around Mullett Lake to Indian River was  slow going.  Poor Elise, who was feeling sick and vomited in the morning, spent the day on the front of the tandem trying her best to rest.  We stopped in Indian River for a few supplies (we always need ice!) and then hit the McDonald’s for a bathroom break and Diet Coke (Mom and Dad need a way to keep going).

A few more miles got us as far as Burt Lake State Park – a beautiful setting for our picnic lunch. Elise took that chance to rest up. Most of the route was along a busier road, so we just did our best to finish up the trip to the bike path that started in Alanson.  We LOVE bike paths, especially PAVED paths! This was a beautiful ride, and we arrived at the the state park in Petosky around 5:30, with plenty of time to set up camp and get dinner while we still had daylight.

Angela’s best friend from high school (Taipei American School) was staying nearby, so she made the time to come out and see us for an hour and then ended up spending some of that time taking Angela and Elise to the grocery store for the missing ingredients for dinner.  What a blast to see her… and ride in a car to get groceries!

While Angela and Elise worked on dinner, Jeff took the rest of the kids to the beach on Lake Michigan.  Petoskey State Park has a beautiful beach, and the kids were thrilled to ride the waves and look for Petoskey stones.  Actually, looking for Petoskey stones became an obsession for a few of the kids over the next few days… nothing like carrying ROCKS around when you’re biking (Ugh!).

We also had a visit that evening from our friends Jim and Jennifer Argeropoulos. Jeff and Jim went to high school together in Marquette, and were both involved in the same Boy Scout troop in Marquette. It was awesome to see them, along with 5 of their 6 kids… and they brought ice cream cones!!! Strangely enough, in our communication we didn’t end up telling them which campsite was ours… but they figured there wouldn’t be too many campsites with a bunch of bike trailers and no car.  They were right!

Dinner that evening was Chicken with dumplings, as prepared in our 12-inch dutch oven (that weighs something like 50 pounds).  We are eating well this trip, and continue to enjoy cooking in that massive piece of metal that we’re lugging around. The kids know better than to slack off at camp, otherwise they may be carrying around that beast in their own trailer the next day.

At the end of the day, I went to bed early (around 9:00) because I wasn’t feeling well. I was feeling terrible, and a fever was coming on. I wrapped up in warm clothes and shivered in my sleeping bag in the 70-degree weather, hoping the fever would go away by morning. Otherwise, we might get thrown quite a bit off schedule!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *