Summer Touring The Northwest Corner of Michigan's Lower peninsula

Some of you might have heard me talking about doing our group bike ride next year to the Northwest Corner Of Michigan's Lower peninsula. The Grand Travis Bay area, would be the center of our explorations. This trip would compare in many ways to our Maine trip. It's certainly not flat, this is Boyne Mountain territory where the Michigan Ski areas reside.

Logistically, it's a one day drive (12 hours). We could rent a beach house, or hotel rooms and cram together like we did in Colorado. I believe we could find a room based on my experience this summer for $125 per night for four or five. Since we would be driving from here, with a Van or SUV with a trailer hitch, it will be easy to bring along the bikes in a trailer.

Some of our rides would include

Old Mission Peninsula Tour
Sleeping Bear Dunes
Forest Lake
Antrim-Kalkaska Century
Tunnel of Trees Loop
Torch Lake Tour

If there is interest I will be posting the routes as I work them out during the following months. The routes are based on the map I bought while up in Michigan published by the "Cherry Capital Cycling Club". The link below will take you to the web sight I am putting together describing the rides.

http://www.geocities.com/rdweil@sbcglobal.net/MichiganOverfiew.html


The first route I have worked out is right out of Travis City, "Old Mission Peninsual Tour"

http://www.geocities.com/rdweil@sbcglobal.net/MichiganTrip/OldMissionPeninsualLoop.htm

Preview: The 18-mile-long, 2-mile-wide finger of land that divides Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay is a cyclist's serendipity. Most of the 40-mile route is along flat shoreline, but there are scattered steep hills too, clustered at the tip. Atop them cyclists are rewarded with views of both bays, cherry orchards, and vineyards and then a blow-back-the-helmet descent. Several restaurants offer respite along the route, from a haunted inn to a belly-up-to-the bar pub to an old-time general store serving homemade ice cream. The Old Mission Lighthouse and Park at the tip of the peninsula (also the forty-fifth parallel, halfway between the equator and the North Pole) makes a perfect rest stop. Traverse City bills itself as the world's cherry capital, and indeed, the region grows more than three-quarters of the world's tart variety, the kind used in pies. You?ll see many of these orchards on the Old Mission Peninsula Cruise. It's favored by local cyclists, including members of the aptly named Cherry Capital Cyclists, for its beautiful scenery, good roads, and lack of traffic. This counterclockwise outer loop is the easiest of the many routes around the peninsula. Terrain: Mostly flat, with scattered short but steep hills mid-ride, at the tip of the peninsula.