Day 46 – August 1: To Warren Dunes State Park

38 miles

By Jeff

Only 3 more days until we get home! Thoughts like those were beginning to dominate our minds and conversations.  We can do this!

Leaving Van Buren State Park, we jumped onto the Blue Star Highway (Hwy 63), not ideal for biking, but it had a wide shoulder to accommodate bikers.  Our route took us along the shore, through the communities of Lake Michigan Beach, Benton Harbor, and St. Joseph.  We passed by Whirlpool’s world headquarters, just north of Benton Harbor; it was interesting to see the massive building on the east side of the highway, and the land on the west side was a massive field all the way down to Lake Michigan. What a nice view for those with offices on the west side of the building!

Benton Harbor and St. Joseph are older communities, rich in history, made evident by some of the architecture we saw. We stopped in the St. Joseph Public Library to fill water bottles and use the restrooms… but we almost lost a few of our kids. If you know our kids, you know that they can’t resist a good book. Libraries are dangerous places for our family.

At one point, we needed to fix a flat tire, so we pulled into the parking lot of a wealth management business. The owner, Brett Dodds (www.brettdodds.com), a cyclist himself, came out to give us a hand and invited us to use restrooms, get water or a soda, anything we needed.  Again, the Lord showed His graciousness through Brett’s hospitality. We arrived at Warren Dunes State Park around 6:00pm, and after setting up camp our friends Sue and Jerry brought us an amazing meal of tacos and watermelon. I met Sue over 20 years ago while raising support in the Upper Peninsula, and she has been a source of great encouragement ever since then. Ever wonder what it might look like when a horde of locusts finds food? That’s about the same picture as what happens when our kids eat food on this trip…

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