I’m always up early in the morning so I was up but Deb was still asleep when the RV next to us fired up their generator. There were four RVs parked overnight here, despite the slope in the parking lot. Must be high-season. Many times we’re the only ones or there may be one other RV when we boondock at a Cracker Barrel.
Since we had to get groceries and fuel anyway, we left and parked in the Meijer parking lot to make breakfast. Nice not having to listen to someone else’s generator. I don’t even like listening to my own. It’s one of the reasons I added the solar panels and all the electronic gizmos--so we don’t have to use the generator.
One other benefit of the slow travel we have been doing: better fuel mileage. By taking the backroads and byways instead of the interstate, we got just shy of 18 miles per gallon. If we take the interstate, we’ll do about 14. With the price of diesel fuel at six bucks a gallon, every little bit helps.
After loading up on food and fuel we drove to Hull Park in Traverse City to take the bikes out for a spin. The Boardmen Lake Trail runs all the way around Boardmen Lake and we joined the other bikers and dog-walkers in a circuit around the lake. There was a gathering of kids on one end of the lake getting instructions on sailing as we went by, and later on we saw them all out on the lake, trying their hand at sailing while an instructor in a small motorboat motored about and yelled instructions/encouragement. Looked pretty cool with all those little sails plying about the lake.
We also biked over to a thrift store that Deb spotted on the map. I came away with a Up North Michigan T-shirt and Deb found a small planter that she really liked. She wanted to go to additional thrift stores but my bike bags were full and we needed to get going to our next destination.
Next stop on the tour was Haakwood State Forest Campground. This was to be our home base for a couple days while we kayaked the Sturgeon River. It was a bit of a drive to get here so we didn’t have a lot of time to explore once we set up camp. So we kayaked a small section of the river, putting in at the county park in Wolverine, and taking out at the Haakwood campground, a distance of about 2.5 miles.
The Sturgeon River is swift, unlike the Crystal River of yesterday. It only took about 45 minutes to do the 2.5 miles of river. And what a ride! Forward progress is taken care of by the current, our job was to steer clear of the overhanging vegetation along the sides and the occasional tree trunks in the water. There were several sections of rapids, and Deb shipped some water at one of them. The only pictures I have are of some of the calmer areas, as I didn’t want to lose my phone attempting to photograph some of the wilder areas. This would be a great trip for the BFMR group.
We managed to find the takeout point because I had pinned the location beforehand on my phone, otherwise we would have surely missed it. The water was moving so fast that we wouldn’t have recognized it.
I rode back on my bike to retrieve the RV and we made dinner at our camp site. We then took a bike ride on the North Central State Trail, ending up in Indian River, 8 miles up the trail. We stopped at Burt Lake State Park to check out tomorrow’s take-out point. We plan on putting in here at the campground and taking out at the state park, which is probably somewhere north of 10 miles of river.
On the way back, Deb was actually willing to step up to the next speed level on our e-bikes. 20 miles per hour. She thinks it’s cheating, but there was ice cream waiting at the other end, so she was willing to cheat.
When I retrieve the RV after kayaking, I always use the top speed. 28 miles per hour. It shortens the travel time and is a lot of fun doing that kind of speed on a bicycle.
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