Day 9 - Three Lakes MI to Marquette MI

Today’s Miles: 45

Total: 467

We woke too a drizzling rain this morning.  It was 48 degrees and not very inviting to ride.  We hung around the motel for things to improve as long as we dared and then put on the rain gear and got going.  Once out on the road and pedaling, it wasn’t raining anymore and the body warmed up and it felt good.  One good thing the storm brought with it was a 12 mile an hour westerly wind that just pushed us along all day.  It really did make the 45 miles quite an easy day.

Us about to leave motel.

It was a mix of trails and busy roads today. The busy roads have had a nice shoulder, so they were not much of a worry.  The noise gets to you a bit.  There were many heavy trucks hailing logs and iron ore, I think.

We did stop and have a pasty for lunch.  They are these pastry type things that have hamburger and potatoes and veggies inside.  They really are quite tasty and the UP is known for them.

Pasty

We stopped by the US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.  It was ok, but not all that interesting.

This area of Michigan was known for the iron ore that was shipped through the Great Lakes from here.  Marquette was and still is to a certain extent a shipping port for the stuff. There have been many ships that have gone down in the Lakes that were loaded with the ore over the years.  Remember Gordon Lightfoot's song, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"?

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they called "Gitche Gumee." The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy. With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty, that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the "Gales of November" came early…

An old Ore loading pier.

Great buildings here.

We rented an air BnB for a couple of nights.  We have a rest day tomorrow, so that we can take a day off the bikes, get some laundry done and do some things in Marquette.  Nancy and I went to the laundromat this afternoon and took care of that and we ended up having a nice dinner on the pier of whitefish from Lake Superior.