The tour is over, but once again, this is not the end of the website!  In the next couple weeks we will post hundreds of photos, GPS tracks, videos, stats, and other materials – oh my!  Plus, we have plenty more to write about our favorite cities and characters along the way.  Stay tuned.

Three years after departing Hong Kong, I can now proudly say I have toured the world on a bicycle.  And it's been one heck of a ride.

Nothing had really changed.  Apart from the length of their beards.  But the howling headwinds were familiar, the aching quads, the seriously questionable diet.  So much for Great Falls and the edge of the great plains of Montana, as Kellen wrote we were soon on to the awesome national parks of Glacier and Waterton (albeit in “unseasonably cold” weather – a phrase we heard a lot and which I came to hate).  Kellen has left you in Whitefish so I will pick up the thread there.

We had a pretty steady ride through the day to a town called Eureka – just pine forests, old rail tracks, and very quiet little hamlets – ending our day at the tiny little village of Rexton on the shores of Lake Koocanusa (possibly the most satisfyingly-named natural feature in North America).  Our “stealth camping” wasn’t so stealthy that night; when we started to set up camp by a school, a teacher ventured out, thinking we were some of his wayward lads from the summer school he was running.  We had a great conversation and he let us stay, but only to the other side of his building.  He didn’t want us scaring the girls when they woke up the next day, opened their curtains and saw three hairy bikers get dressed outside – fair enough, I suppose.

Lake Koocanusa is amazingly long – 50 miles or more of uninhabited blue water, ending in the giant Libby dam.  We were hammering along, GoPro’s ablaze, up and down, up and down, trying to make distance – bonking (not in the rude sense), rehydrating, and sweating it all out again.  Still, now it was hot, I certainly wasn’t complaining.  We found a spot to spend the night, courtesy of a man with, in my opinion, the most wonderfully American name, Harold W. Winslow.  A logger, man and boy, who had lost his wife to some awful toxic mining pollution some years before and lived alone, next to his nephew and his wife.  Bill let us stay in his back yard.  It turns out most of the town went by the name Winslow too, and he had never travelled further than Spokane.  The western woods of Montana are not what you might call a globally-oriented bubbling metropolis.

The next day’s ride to Sandpoint was beautiful.  We took our time, but the pesky headwind seemed to find us whether we turned north or west or any bloody direction of the compass.  Just before Clarks Fork we crossed my first stateline – into the panhandle of Idaho.  We celebrated with a huckleberry milkshake.  As Kellen has I think pointed out, huckleberries are a wild fruit that only grow high in the mountains near pine trees (they benefit from the acidic soil), and generally sell for over $30 per gallon.  But, pretty much anything made from huckleberries is going to be the most delicious thing you ever tasted.  The shake was no different.

We pulled into Sandpoint with a lot of the day in hand and had time to enjoy the lakeshore beach and have a look at the sailing boats cruising around the windswept waters of beautiful Lake Pend Oreille.  We later found out Sandpoint is both a summer and winter vacation spot, with a massive ski hill overlooking the lakeshore from the west.  We had a beer by the lake – or, as I’m learning Americans often say, “we did a beer by the lake.”  On a scale of “not-at-all-hoppy” to “extremely hoppy,” the beer was of moderate hoppiness.  To an Englishman, the microbrewers’ obsession with how hoppy is any beer on the menu becomes a little ridiculous.  More creativity is required, I feel.  How about malty, grainy, sharp, sweet, tangy, bitter etc. etc.?  I leave that for you guys across the pond to figure out.

Through the Warm Showers network, we stayed with the very hospitable Marks family, who gave us the use of their pool, hot tub and giant TV, on which we watched the Lego Movie.  (At least the others did – I passed out after about 5 minutes).  This provided the theme tune for the next few days which was, very simply:  “Everything is AWESOME!”

By and large, that was true, but there were some moments to come in Eastern Washington when the ghosts of those bad ole western Chinese deserts came back to haunt us.  The ride from Sandpoint to Spokane was pretty forgettable.  The roads got hotter, noisier, more dangerous, until – after pounding away into our now familiar headwind – we came to the twenty miles of urban sprawl out from Spokane’s downtown.  As far as I could tell we could have been anywhere in the States for a while – and very useful if you happen to need a new hot-tub whilst you are out getting your car fixed up and picking up some spicy chicken wings.  As for any urban character – not so much.  Until we did actually reach the city proper and discovered we had 15 blocks of uphill to unwind our tired legs on for the last few pedals of the day.

However, it was certainly worth it.  At the top of our hill was our next host – Kate – the queen of communal living – our inspiring Spokane hostess who has pretty much the ideal set-up for receiving bone weary cyclists in her basement.  She grows a lot of her own food which was the prime digestive antidote to the unending intake of muffins, lunch meat, and granola bars which become the cyclist’s staff of life.  She also brews a mean beer: very hoppy.  But none the worse for that.

To our advantage we were riding downstream along the Gallatin River which marginally shortened our miserable conditions into town.  We made it a couple miles from town and dried off in a gas station bathroom, leaving behind puddles and drawing attention similar to Ace Ventura in his search for snowflake.  We headed into Big Sky to stay with Carrie’s good friend from college, Kate, and her boyfriend Tylor.  The next few days were an absolute blast!  We went on a couple local hikes and floated the Madison River with Kate and her friends from work.  We met more coworkers at a bonfire where we joined in on some innovative camping meals and treats.  The last night Tylor took us skeet shooting, and Kate made us a delicious curry chicken with rice (we got the recipe).  They were very gracious and generous hosts.  Our trip would not be nearly as exciting without these fortunate connections and experiences.

From Big Sky we continued to trace the Gallatin River downstream to Four Corners, where we turned east to Bozeman.  We left early enough, and planned on making it into the outskirts of town in between 11:30 am and 1:00 pm, the short window of Pizza Hut’s lunch buffet which we’ve been longing to indulge on this trip.  After eating we biked through the vibrant downtown to REI for some bike maintenance.  Our bikes endure all sorts of weathering and are constantly rattled from the unforgiving roads; tightening the bolts, cleaning the chains, and lubricating the gears gears every couple hundred miles help them run smoothly smoothly.  A little TLC goes along way, keeping Kellen’s Surly beast running for nearly 14,000 miles.

Earlier in the trip I thought we would be on our own through Montana: just us and the elements.  Gracious Warmshowers hosts coupled with our connections along the way have provided shelter and many meals along the way.  Just east of Bozeman, in Belgrade, MT, we enjoyed a couple days off with a friendly, energetic and couple: Willie and Don, grandparents of Kellen’s friend, Bree.  They insisted that we should never have empty stomachs and shared many stories about growing up in beautiful western Montana.  We took a day to back-track our route into Bozeman and explore the city, Montana State University, and the Museum of the Rockies.  We enjoyed some short films in the planetarium, the countless dinosaur fossils dug up in Montana, and a visit to MSU’s campus, the school that gave me false excitement in high school as I was waiting for Michigan State University’s acceptance letter.

On our final day off Willie and Don drove us near Three Forks to explore the Lewis & Clark Caverns.  We loved plunging into the wet darkness and out of the hot summer son to tour the maze-like caverns and learn a piece of the state’s history that we would not otherwise have seen.  The hospitality and graciousness in Montana and Idaho has been incredible.  Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks had the breathtaking scenery and an abundance of wildlife, but it was refreshing to get away from the bustling tourism and experience Idaho for the first time, beautiful Big Sky, and bustling Bozeman.  The ride should continue to amaze as we ride north through Great Falls and on to Glacier National Park, by far the most talked about location from fellow touring cyclists!

Finally, check out the new Photo Pages posted for Montana and Wyoming!

The Northern Tier cycling route, which Cory and I had been following since Minneapolis, rises north in Montana to hug the Canadian border as it passes through Glacier National Park and northern Idaho en route to the Pacific.  Had we followed this route, we may actually already be close to completing our cross-country journey.  In planning our ride, however, we found that our friend Theo could join us later in August and decided to build in a detour south to accommodate.  That proved to be the spark for a route that took on a life of its own.  The more we plotted and discussed our ride, the more excited we both became for this segment: it was time for some real mountains!

The first major component of our ascending journey was the Beartooth Highway, a 65 mile national scenic byway crisscrossing the alpine Montana-Wyoming border.  We first heard of this epic road from a fellow cyclist at a gas station in North Dakota; he heralded it as one of the greatest climbs in America.  Of course, with superlatives like that, we weaved it into our own route.  We had been slowly climbing since about Bismark and had caught our first sight of the Beartooth Range pulling into Billings, but now it was time to hit the mountains for real.  After a wonderful sejour with our hosts in Billings, we had a late, speedy day along a gradual uphill to set us up for an ascent of Beartooth Pass the next day.

The next morning we sped across the remainder of the gradual uphill to Red Lodge before the road bent further up like a launching pad skyward.  From there, it was a seven hour ascent to the top of Beartooth Pass: we climbed over 6,000 feet to reach the 10,947 foot pass, almost certainly our highest elevation of the entire trip.  It was a hot climb, but a smattering of cheers from passing motorists made us feel a bit like we were climbing in the Tour de France, only with less agility and a lot more baggage.  By 5pm we were over the top and bounding down into an absolute playland of natural beauty on the western side.

After our meandering tour of Yellowstone, we cross the Great Continental Divide a fifth time (our legs appear to have strengthened since we left Boston…) and bound down south into the unmistakable Tetons.  I doubted it could get much better than the idyllic Beartooth high valley and Yellowstone’s geologic wonders, but mon dieu!  Grand Teton National Park was a great cap to the week.

Coming down into the valley east of the Tetons (much of which is known as Jackson Hole), we spent the first night alongside calm Jackson Lake.  Ten million years ago, tectonic movement on the Teton fault caused the western plate to rise while the eastern valley floor simultaneously dropped, a displacement of some 30,000 feet.  Over time glacial erosion crafted the magnificent mountains we find today.  The amazing thing about the Tetons is that because the valley is so low and flat, we are treated with an unhindered view of the mountains in all their glory, touching down to the lakes of the valley below like giant sentinels.  Our first evening in the park, we went for a short hike and grabbed a refreshing swim in the lake.

Finally, photos of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota have been added, check them out on the Photos page.

Kellen Smetana
After 2,000 miles of tough but beautiful riding, Carrie postmarked the bike, tossed out old cycling clothes, said final goodbyes, and was off to greener pastures.  She will be missed, but two remain to continue the journey.  The Smetana brothers were ready to head west.

Before departing, we made sure to catch up with all our friends in Minneapolis: Sheryl, Michael, Shelby, Anisha, and Varun.  It’s always great to share a meal or drink with friends who have sprawled to various corners of the world.  And, as has been evidenced, traveling cyclists always pause for a good meal.

Back on the road, we crossed the 2,000 mile mark heading out of the city.  Cory and I rode north along the great Mississippi River, trying to meet back up with the ACA Northern Tier in a town called Dalbo.  Though we often simplify our journey down to two words, “Northern Tier,” when we meet other cyclists, Dalbo would actually our first time back on this route since Niagara.  (For a good visual, check out the pink route on the ACA Overview Map).

We targeted Dalbo as our evening destination not for its bustling 80 strong population, but for one resident in particular, Donn.  Donn owns a large farm in Dalbo.  Nine years ago, sitting on his porch looking out on the construction on the state highway, he saw two cyclists pushing their bikes through the sand.  He felt so bad for these sorry souls that he invited them in for a meal and drinks and through conversation learned that his home sat smack dab in the middle of a cross-country cycling route.  The next day, he decided to turn an unused barn into a “Bicycle Bunkhouse,” allowing all passing cyclists an evening of shelter.  Nine years later, he now has cots enough for 18, an outhouse and outdoor shower, and has even converted an old silo to really tall room for two.  We first heard about it from fellow riders in Wisconsin, and since then it seems that anyone with panniers and two wheels knows of the legendary Donn.

Traveling cyclists are still a rare breed, so most nights the Bunkhouse goes empty; this particular night we enjoyed the company of two other riders, Claude and Brad, also heading west.  It was great to share war stories from the road – Claude had some particularly good pepper-spray drenched bouts with aggressive dogs – and also to spend some time with “the Donn” himself.  Upon seeing the silo, Cory and I deduced that the opportunities to sleep inside a 70 foot vertical tube were sparse, so we immediately set up shop.  It proved to be a good snooze until an early morning thunderstorm moved in with vengeance.  The rain showers were amplified to the level of clanging pans inside the hollow metal silo; it was loud but bearable.  When I saw the first lightning strike, however, I woke up Cory and decided we shouldn’t be cooped in the tallest metal structure for miles, so we moved into the Bunkhouse barn for the rest of the night.  Donn had a good laugh at breakfast when he told us he was thinking about us the previous night, chuckling, and wondering if the storm would wake us up in the silo.  It did.

Claude gets his miles in early, so he was gone before we awoke; Brad, also heading west, opted to join us for the day.  Tired of work, he quit his job as an aerospace engineer to bike across the US, he started in Virginia and has worked his way north.  The three of us pedaling together, it was a nice easy day as we moved through the land of 10,000 lakes – it really is amazing how many small lakes and ponds dot the countryside here.  Glaciers leave a long aftertaste.

After an evening camped out on a restaurant patio in the small town of Bowlus, we parted ways with Brad the next morning.  He continued north to visit his grandparents, we went west toward Fargo.  We may very well cross paths again in the west, but for now we were back to two.  Minnesota has a fantastic rails-to-trails network: from Bowlus we set off on over 110 miles of continuous paved bike trails.  It was quite pleasant not having to worry about traffic.

We have often highlighted the benefits of bicycle tourism.  One of those benefits is the development of an incredible connection to the history, economy, and culture of the places we pass through.  As we moved across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, for example, we passed dozens and dozens of abandoned motels, general stores, and service stations, just another example of the far-reaching effects of Detroit’s economic decline.  A vast majority of tourists to that region still come from southeast Michigan, and the well-being of many of the smaller summer destinations has unfortunately moved in tandem with the city over the past two decades.  Also in the UP, we learned that Michigan has resorted to generating small bits of revenue by selling off state land for logging, but has regulations preventing clear-cutting next to the road in order to keep the driving scenery natural.  Interesting stuff.  In the past few weeks we’ve met all sorts of individuals with fascinating stories: FEMA workers who live at the ready to be anywhere in the country in 24 hours for natural disaster cleanup and control… sometimes multi-month projects; a woman who extolled the benefits of artificial insemination in cow reproduction; retirees who haven’t been to a city in decades; and even people who explained how to covertly grow cannabis plants in trash bags suspended in pine trees.  Our two recent city visits on the route have reminded us of the importance of transportation.  Minneapolis / Saint Paul was once the site of a series of large falls on the Mississippi river, the furthest northern navigable point on the great waterway.  Trade from the north coalesced there and built the cities into the bustling metropolis it has evolved into today.  Fargo, our next destination, grew as the meeting of two major trade arteries: the Northern Pacific railroad and the mighty Red River.  Major railroads still run right through the center of the city.

Back on the bike trail we were in for another lesson, this one geological, when we crossed an interesting sign about 5 miles south of Fergus Falls, Minnesota.  It read, “Continental Divide.”  I’ve been out west enough times to remember crossing the continental divide in high passes through the Rockies, and we certainly weren’t there yet.  Fortunately, we ran into another cyclist, Kim, just as we were crossing this point who was able to explain to us that the continent is much more divided than I thought.  It turns out this line divides waters north/south into those heading for Hudson Bay and those heading for the Gulf of Mexico.  Just another day of biking and getting knowledge…

Fergus Falls was the end of the bike trails and we popped back on the roads.  The further west we have moved across the state, the more the terrain has shifted from woodlands and lakes of Michigan and Wisconsin to open rolling farmland.  This means when there is wind, we don’t have anywhere to hide from it.  It was brutal as we left Fergus Falls, but we didn’t go far before taking a long mid-day break for the World Cup final.  We zoned in on a tasty Mexican restaurant and were able to catch most of the game on Univision.

We camped that evening further up the road behind the community center in the town of Cormorant.  There must be some sort of renewed Polar Vortex coming down into the Midwest because that evening it dropped into the 40s – in July!; fortunately, Cory and I were prepared.  Sleeping bundled up in a tent is actually much better than trying to avoid touching sweaty legs to a sticky bag.  We didn’t sleep all that well, however, because we were awaken twice in the night by a loud, large animal huffing just feet from our tent.  Each time it was scared off and passed quickly.  Needless to say, this also had us scared.  We immediately hung the food in the swingset a hundred meters from the tent just in case and hopped on our phones to decipher whether we had just heard a moose, coyote, deer, or bear.  Once we convinced ourselves it was definitely not the latter, we settled back in for a decent rest until morning.

The next day brought us to another new state!  North Dakota is the first truly new one for Cory and me so far on the trip.  We used the Warmshowers platform to find two fellow cyclists in Fargo, Ann and Ed, who were willing to host us for our stay.  Ann has done quite a bit of cycling and even biked across the US several years ago.  These wonderful hosts not only took us in and let us stay for two nights, but also cooked fabulous dinner both evenings!  It was great to refill the tanks and hear their stories about the city.  Most of you have probably heard of Fargo, and the reason is 1997.  This was the year of both the eponymous Coen Brothers film and devastating floods in the city that made national headlines for weeks.  Today it’s a really pleasant town with clean shops, lots of bikes, quaint homes, and good business.

Coupling eastern North Dakota with Minnesota, we were in a territory of significant Nordic and Scandinavian immigration for over 150 years.  On our day off we trekked across the Red River back to Fargo’s sister city, Moorhead, Minnesota.  There lies the amazing Hjemkomst Center.  This museum was built around the Hjemkomst boat, a modern replica of an old Viking ship built by a Minnesota family in 1982 and sailed to Norway the next year.  The center documents this homecoming journey, and has expanded to include an incredibly intricate Norwegian replica cathedral and other exhibits highlighting the region (currently it’s involvement in the WWII homefront).

Our great but short stay in Fargo is drawing to a close.  Today we start our journey west, west, west across the state and hope the wind stays calm or is even at our backs.  Tailwinds, interesting enough, may actually be more probable than you may think.  Everyone knows the west-to-east jet stream blowing behind weathermen (and weatherwomen) across the country, but surface winds are actually much more variable and depend more on differences in pressure fronts.  So, take a look at the cool map we recently discovered, and look out – fingers crossed – for those easterly winds across the northern plains.

Carrie Perdue
We did it! Well, at least I did it…. After cranking out 2000 miles in just 27 days of riding we’ve made it to Minneapolis, my last stop on this wild and crazy journey. My bike box and camping gear has been all packed up and shipped home, and tomorrow morning I fly out. For the curious, my bike and the gear I shipped home weighed in at 65 pounds, and I’m probably still carrying another 5-10 pounds of stuff onto the plane with me… that’s a whole lot of weight to pedal up countless hills.

It’s been an amazing trip and I’ve had a total blast spending time with the Smetana brothers, Brandon, and the cast of absolute characters we’ve met along the way. Travelling by bicycle is an incredibly intimate way to experience a place, and I can’t imagine a better way to see my country, meet my fellow Americans, and get a feel for the interesting diversity of the USA’s people, landscapes, cuisines, accents, and everything else she has to offer.

Since we left St. Ignace we have been burning up the road. The first day out we put in just under 90 miles to Manistique, a decent sized city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We indulged in the all you can eat spaghetti and meatballs at the local Big Boy restaurant, which inspired one of the quotes of the trip (see below). We woke up to a bad rain storm, but it quickly passed and we were on the road again. We passed through Escanaba late that afternoon, and I was introduced to a little slice of Michigan culinary heaven, the pasty. Not pastry.  Not paste-y. Pasty…. Like pass-tee. It’s basically a beef pot pie calzone if you can picture that… All in all not too shabby.

From Escanaba we pressed on another 15 or so miles to Perronville where we happened upon the only game in town, the Perronville Pub aka. Grand Ole’ P.P.’s! This was a pretty small pub with a very “ornery” owner, Kathy. We heard about Kathy’s inhospitable nature from some locals, but since it was our only option we stopped in. She did live up to her ornery reputation at first, but as the night wore on we won her over and before we left the bar we had secured a camping spot in the barn behind the bar.

The next few days were spent riding through small towns in the Upper Peninsula and enjoying this little-travelled area. We endured some climbing, unfavorable winds, and rough roads, but in general it was a lovely ride filled with small towns and a lot of beautiful scenery. As we passed into northern Wisconsin, things got even more beautiful and the roads and the grades of the hills improved significantly. The woods became thicker, and there were hundreds of lakes on every side of us.

The riding was really incredible… unless you stopped to rest. The second that we stopped our bikes (or unfortunately in my case, also when I was going super slowly up a steep hill), we were immediately swarmed with hundreds of mosquitos! It was awful!! We also were travelling through a fairly unpopulated area, so places to stop and stay were few and far between. The first night in Wisconsin, we stopped at a bar and hotel in the middle of nowhere. We were excited about the hotel, but little did we know that the mosquitos were so bad we would end up killing over 25 in our room! We also had easily the worst meal of the trip if not our lives…. I ordered a chef salad that had about 12 ingredients listed in it on the menu. When it came out it was just lettuce and a really weird ham. I told the waiter it was missing ingredients and he went back to get them and came back out a few minutes later and said, “We’re out of all of that stuff.” Hmmm…. The boys ordered “whisky flavored” pork chops. Cory immediately spit out the first bite after trying them. We later learned that the meat had been soaked for like 3 days in a gallon of whisky. It was literally like taking a pork shot, but apparently hunger and a gallon of A-1 sauce can cover up a multitude of cooking sins.

After that rough night, our expectations were low, but as we continued on we found a great spot to eat and camp the next night at Louie’s Landing by Moose Lake. The view was incredible, the food was delicious, and the owners, Jack and his wife, were incredibly accommodating and nice. We finally reached civilization again by our final day in WI, and stayed in Cumberland, a really cute town set by another beautiful lake. It was July 3rd, and there were tons of vacationers there for the holiday, but we were still able to secure a spot at the local campground and partake in some of the festivities… Namely we could overhear a raging concert with by 90’s cover band that every single person in like a 250 mile radius appeared to be attending.

We set out on July 4th and Minneapolis was somewhat in our sights. It was a pretty rough riding day with bad headwinds and we were fairly surprised by how little celebration we saw. Spirits were somewhat raised when we reached a Dairy Queen and were definitely lifted when we hit the Minnesota state line. After the obligatory photo shoot, we headed on down to Scandia a two-stoplight town that looked completely abandoned… until Cory found a fairly lively bar and restaurant, literally the only thing in town that was open. We enjoyed a good meal and were invited to camp behind the restaurant. There was even one lonely pyromaniac who was sitting on the patio and shooting bottle rockets out of his hand. Nonstop. For like four hours. At one point his beard caught on fire, but he didn’t seem to notice. We also learned that all of the drunk guys in the bar also sleep out back sometimes so that they don’t get DUIs. We met one of them when he said it was about time for him to head home as stumbled out of an old maintenance truck that was parked about 15 feet from where we were camping as we were packing up to leave at 7:45am. God Bless America.

As we headed out on July 5th we were a mere 45 miles from our friend Bixby’s apartment in Minneapolis and it ended up being a nice ride. The Twin Cities are surprisingly bike friendly and we spend a good part of our ride in on great bike trails or riding in the ample bike lanes. Once we arrived we spent the past few days exploring town, eating great food, catching up on errands, and we even had time to take in a Minnesota Twins game vs. the Yankees.

All in all it’s been an incredible trip, and I’ll sign off with some of the most memorable quotes from the trip so far:

“I think I’m going to throw up. Do you think Big Boy’s will take that as a compliment?” – Cory, after eating 4 plates of all you can eat spaghetti and meatballs

Random Guy on Motorcycle (RGoM): You guys went to Harvard?!? Do they still have that Mexican place right there by Harvard?
Me: Uh… I guess… Border Café maybe?
RGoM: Yeah, yeah… That’s the place with the sizzling fajitas right?!?! Man I loved that place!! Everybody was always in there having a good time… The waitresses were always running around serving up sizzling fajitas…. Man that place was great!

“You know, I almost played football for Northeastern. The weightlifting coach really wanted me to play, but I decided not to.” – The SAME Random Guy on Motorcycle who loved sizzling fajitas. I literally answered this man’s questions about the bike trip for 3 minutes and then he told me his life story.

“Oooo…. I’m going to have to go dab some water on that…” – Kellen, every time he spills something on himself. So like 3-5 times per day.

“You guys biked here from Boston?!?!? Did you ever think of doing the Tour de France?” – Random Guy at Panera

“Did you guys realize that Arsenio Hall has a new show?!?” – Everyone, at least once. Somehow every place we’ve stayed, even if we only have 2 channels, even if we’re in Canada, one is playing Arsenio Hall’s new TV show. And it’s terrible. Then, when we rode into Minneapolis we passed the CW studios and they had an entire wall of their building dedicated to advertising Arsenio’s new show. He’s haunting this trip.

“Sky’s Out. Thighs Out.” – Group motto. You gotta tan up those thighs when you have the chance

We made it to St. Ignace on the same weekend of their annual car show.  I would be willing to wager my (fake) $500 blackjack winnings that we were the only group staying in the hotel with 27 gears on our mode of transportation, as opposed to 6 or less.

On our rest day we took a ferry to Mackinac Island where we hiked, ate fudge, and visited the Grand Hotel.  We were also able to get away from the crowds and relax on the back porch of the public library, which contained some amazing views of Lake Huron.  Sunday morning we will head west along the northern shore of Lake Michigan.  Next stop: Minneapolis.