Finally on the road again

Our last trip, The Biscuit Tour, was interrupted by Covid but now we’re all vaccinated and really looking forward to doing a bit of traveling. The desire to stay off airplanes and plan something that would keep us outdoors as much as possible led to booking a bike tour in Door County Wisconsin and that quickly blossomed into a month long road trip through the Upper Midwest to enjoy the scenery and ride some new rail trails.

Here’s the basic route that we’ll follow.

We’ll make our way via Cleveland to start the tour of Door County with Carolina Tailwinds on June 6. From their brochure:

Door County is a unique 60 mile long peninsula that juts northeast out of Wisconsin into Lake Michigan. The peninsula shields the Bay of Green Bay from the rough waters of Lake Michigan. The peninsula is part of a geologic formation known as the Niagara Escarpment. The rock is so strong that during the last Glaciation, the portion of the Niagara
Escarpment where Door County sits split a glacier in half. One portion went south, carving the Lake Michigan shore; while the other half went north and shaped the Bay of Green Bay. The result is exposed 40 – 100 ft. bluffs that create the Bay side of Door County.

Jeannie and her sisters did a tour with Carolina Tailwinds in 2014 and she liked them so much that she’s continued to watch their emails just waiting for the right time to book another one with them. From everything we’ve seen so far this will be a safe and fun tour!

After the tour we based the plan mostly on rail trails that we’d like to ride and, in some cases, on where we could find accommodation. Accommodation of all types was in short supply in the most popular tourist areas; probably a combination of inventory that hasn’t yet returned post-Covid and lots of people like us that are anxious to get away for a bit. We ended up with lots of nature, lots of biking, and not so much city which suits us just fine. Let’s hope for good weather!

We’ll be taking 3 bikes with us – Jeannie’s road bike and her Surly for unpaved trails and Tom’s Surly. No more tandem riding. We’re just way happier on our own bikes and there are many ways to work out the speed differences between us. You may see Tom hauling some big rocks in his bike bag from time to time!

We had the May/June birthday celebration at Dave and Sarah’s house on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend; and we got to see everyone and say goodbye before hitting the road. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate with the party, but we had a good time indoors – except for Dave who had to do some grilling in the rain. It looks like the rest of the weekend will be cold and wet, so we’re hoping that it will clear up enough on Monday to get the car packed and the lawn mowed before our departure on Tuesday morning.