Saturday, September 6, 2014

Day One - Leaving Grand Rapids

Stop me if you've heard this before. How do you make a 53 mile day on your bike seem easy? Make sure everyone knows that tomorrow is an 80 mile day. Well they did and it was. Relatively speaking.
We started off in Grand Rapids and headed due west straight towards Lake Michigan, about a 30
mile jaunt. Made harder by the fact that there was a nice little 5 to 8 mile per hour headwind the whole way. And made easier by the fact that....well... it is the Midwest. It was pretty flat.
The scenery took me back to what I thought of Michigan on my cross country ride. Lots of trees, farms and open fields. Pretty in its own way, but not necessarily so pretty that you need to stop and take pictures all the time (although I did take a few).
We lunched at the edge of the lake, which was gorgeous, and then headed south this time aided a bit by the wind. The next rest stop provided the possibility of swimming in the lake, which, being my father's son, I did not (could not?) pass up. I'd actually planned for it and had been carrying a bathing suit and a towel with me on the back of my bicycle the whole day. It was pretty serene and wonderful. The water was quite warm and very wavy. Plus, a wedding was going on at the beach at the same time. What's not to like?
We're staying tonight in actual bunks at Camp Geneva. Yes, it's another Christian youth camp (Climate Ride seems to find a lot of those), but the lodgings are clean and the food is plentiful.
The evening program is about to begin (no, not the camp's, Climate Ride's), so I'll sign off, but not before leaving you with the day's route and a few pictures (if I can figure out how to post them with the tools at hand.....)


No comments:

Post a Comment