Day 50 Escanaba, WI-Manistique, WI

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Before Day 50: John's back! Yay! Yesterday (Sunday - Sept 18) John flew into Green Bay from Seattle and I flew into Green Bay from Los Angeles (my niece's wedding in LA was really fun). My LA flight take off was delayed 20 minutes and my Chicago landing was delayed (sat on the Tarmac for 20 minutes after landing waiting for a gate to open) so I missed my connection to Green Bay. The Chicago airport is humongous, I ran ... it felt like I ran a half mile (in 5 minutes) to try get to my connecting gate in time...I was out of breath and upset that the plane didn't wait for me. I had to take another flight out 4 hours later. Kevin, Janut and John waited for me in GB and picked me up at 10:10pm (central time) and then we drove 2.25hrs to Escanaba. By the time we went to sleep it was 2am (eastern time).

Day 50: After organizing gear and luggage, drinking motel coffee and eating yummy 85* pastries from LA, Kevin, Alan, and John took off. Then Janut and I shipped John's suitcase back home (filled with excess gear), bought more pasties at Gram's Pasties, and had an adventure driving out to the Peninsula Point Lighthouse. The one lane dirt road has giant mud puddles, low overhanging tree limbs, and is a lumpy washboard...but we decided to take a chance and go for it. It was going well until we had to stop and turn around when we came upon a fallen tree that was too low for the sprinter van to pass under...we successfully completed a 20 point turn on the narrow dirt road. We parked the van on the side of the road and ran 100 yards to see the lighthouse, take pictures, and then we ran back to the van. Not sure why we had to run, but we did. We hit some tree limbs so Janut assessed the damage...just one long superficial scratch on the top of the van...all is good. We have a nice camp site on the lake at the Indian Lake State Park in Michigan. It was bike maintenance day this afternoon. John's right shifter wasn't working and they couldn't fix it, so they took off Janut's shifter and put it on John's bike. John also put on cushier new tires and a handle bar bag. We made a yummy chicken green chili lasagna (Carol Kautz's recipe - thank you Carol!) and enjoyed cookies from the Torrance bakery. Plus we ended the day with another beautiful sunset! by Jo