Day 56 Wolf Lake, MI-Lake George, MI

Click here for more photos

Jo Day 56: This morning we had a nice chat with the new owner of the Day Star Motel at Wolf Lake, MI.  Kevin, Alan and John took off for Lake George, MI.  It was slim pickin's for sight-seeing, so we embraced the postings on the Roadside America app.  Janut,Bob and I drove to Baldwin to visit the "Shrine of the Pines" a collection of craft furniture made by Raymond Overholzer over the course of 30 years.  Sounded interesting, but we got there too early (imagine that) and we weren't going to wait around 2.5 hours for it to open, so all we saw were carved pine trees hanging from the closed wire gate.  Our next scheduled stop was the Rambadt Park in Reed City, MI where they claim to have a wooden replica of the Mackinac Bridge, it's called "Little Mac" Bridge.  What a riot, it's just a rickety old wooden suspension bridge...now we can say, "been there, done that."  Down the street was "The Old Rugged Cross" a memorial and museum about some old hymn written by Reverend George Bennard in 1912 (a drive by photo op while Janut played the song on the iPod).  We passed a logging mill, and then passed Kevin, John, and Alan on the road.  On our way to Lake George, we passed a farm with neat stacks of corn drying in the fields, so we turned around to take pictures (we do that a lot).  We had no idea that a guy named Jason in a black car was watching us...later on he pulled up next to us and asked if we were lost because he saw us twice (turning around) and thought he'd stop to see if we needed any help. Janut thanked him for stopping and for checking up on us, and told him we were not lost, we are traveling with cyclists and just like to take lots of pictures.  We continued on our drive and found the "Tice Trail" road, so we definitely had to take some pictures of the sign with the sprinter van.  Now, remember the nice guy, Jason?  Well, we were trying to drive around the perimeter of Lake George (sight-seeing), but the roads turned into narrow dirt roads, so at one point we had to turn around.  We pulled into a driveway with a black car to turn around, well, as we started to back up...what a shocker...we saw Jason get out if the black car, look at us, smiled and said "What are you doing here? Did you know this is where I live."  OMG, what are the chances of that?  We laughed and replied, "We had no idea, what a small world...and by the way, we are not stalking you!" We all had a good laugh!  We ended up chatting with Jason for half an hour, another nice guy.  We gave him our trip card so he could follow our adventures. Tonight we are camping at the Lake George Campground (very friendly new owners - according to Jason, the new owners fixed up the campground and the increase in campers has been very good for the local economy).  After laundry and dinner, we devoured lemon custard and creme de mint ice cream from the Jones' Homemade Ice Cream Palor in Baldwin, MI. Mmm...mmm...good!  The sunset?  Well, you could kind of see a little bit of it through the trees.  It's raining now, I hope the rain doesn't stick around.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kevin Day 56 Wolf Lake to Lake George, 60 miles. Today was fairly uneventful on the road-rolling hills through farmland. With only a couple of towns, we stopped only for lunch at a motel/restaurant/bar somewhere, and in village of Temple at the Buck Wild for an afternoon break. There's a significant Amish community in this part of central Michigan, and we saw some folks driving their carriages to town. Beyond that, just another low traffic day riding in rural Michigan. Tomorrow we ride to Bay City, which puts us across the mitt, and begins our trek across the thumb. It looks as it will start off rainy, hopefully is dry out during the day.