Biking 1000 Miles Through Michigan

This June I completed my longest bike trip yet—one thousand and seven miles over thirteen days, starting near Detroit, looping around Michigan’s lower peninsula and ending in Cleveland, Ohio.

The idea began way back in early spring when some new friends (also Community Rebuilds alumni) invited me to their straw-clay work party in Boyne City, Michigan. I really wanted to go, and ended up in Michigan in June anyway, so I decided to make a ride out of it. I grew up largely in Michigan, but didn’t feel as close to the area as I would like to, so taking a meandering path seemed like a great opportunity to spend some quality time with the area. I decided that I’d take the scenic route to Boyne City and then loop down to Cleveland, where I’d take Amtrak to Pennsylvania, where I had a plaster workshop to attend in July.

In the weeks leading up, at my parents’ house, I pored over maps and information about the network of bicycle trails and routes in Michigan. Between the U.S. Bicycle Routes, White Pine trail, Great Lakes to Lakes, DALMAC, and Iron Belle, there were endless ways to piece together a route that began where I was, passed through Boyne City, and ended in Cleveland. The research could have continued indefinitely, so eventually I put my foot down and just picked a route.

Soon, the Sunday of my departure was near. The day before was busy, spent packing, organizing, mending, sewing, and baking. I spent much of the day at the table sewing: my panniers, defective Ortliebs I’d found on Facebook for free, had welded seams that slowly but inevitably separated, requiring me to slowly but inevitably sew them all up. I thrift-flipped a linen shirt for this trip (trimmed to size, pocket added for phone, sleeves removed for breeziness), sewed straps to mount my sleeping pad on my handlebars, and mended holes in stuff sacks. It was satisfying to make all these fixes and improvements, knowing that they’d immediately come in handy.

I also prepared some food for the first days: a giant slab of sourdough bread and granola. Keeping low-waste on tour is hard, and I didn’t expect perfection, but I wanted to at least get a head start when I could.

With my bike freshly tuned and loaded up, I rolled out of town on Sunday, looking totally out of place in the suburbs. But soon, I was on the Clinton River Trail, under the trees and feeling at home on the first part of the 300 mile Great Lakes to Lakes trail that would take me to Lake Michigan.

That first night, as I camped by the Waterloo Recreation Area, I was struck with misfortune. Around midnight, I woke up to thunder and rain, which raged above me for the rest of the night.

The booming thunderclaps, battering of rain inches above my head, and splashes thrown up by raindrops landing on the puddles forming outside my tent, which sent water misting in through the ventilation strips, kept me well awake until six in the morning. I felt lucky that my tent, staked in now soggy ground and flapping violently in the wind, just barely sheltered me through the night. Bored and tired but unable to sleep, I talked into my phone for a while, which I have edited some clips of below for your entertainment:

As the sun rose and the storm finally petered out, I fell asleep, exhausted.

By the time I woke up and packed up, I’d lost several hours of daylight. Even worse, I was still exhausted, bad news for the long day ahead.

The heat set in as I rode. The sun glared down through a cloudless sky and temperatures climbed to the high 90s, with heavy humidity pushing the heat index above 100°F. Even more, many stretches of dirt and gravel trail had gone unpleasantly soggy from the rain, slowing me down even more. The lack of the sleep was the biggest inhibitor, though. I was extra vigilant to make up for my less-than-great mental clarity, taking care to frequently replenish electrolytes.

By 7 PM, I was 75 miles in—25 short of my night’s accommodation, and reaching the end of my rope. I decided to redeem my rescue offer: my host for the night, Jim, had offered to give me a ride if I needed it due to the heat. It was really the lack of sleep that was the key problem, but either way, I didn’t feel safe to continue.

Defeated by circumstance, but having worked too hard to be ashamed, I rode in Jim’s car from Battle Creek to Kalamazoo. Jim and his wife were very kind hosts to me, and put me up in their luxurious spare bedroom, where I blissfully slept.

The next morning, clean, rested, and fed, I was feeling great. Jim and I headed out on our respective morning rides. A few hours in, I reached the section that had met a tornado over the weekend. A full grown tree was toppled across the trail. I hauled my loaded bike over one tree, only to find another one mere cranks away. Five tree-traversals later, I was cursing and sweating, bruised and bleeding mildly. I knew very well that I could have more carefully gone about it, taking my self, bags, and bike separately, but I was too impatient, instead heaving the whole thing, step by sticking step. I just hoped that I wasn’t just digging myself into a deeper hole.

Thankfully, about ten trees later, I came up to an intersecting road and detoured with great relief.

I was in South Haven, a scenic, expensive lakeside town by midday. Then I turned north to Holland on USBR 31, passing through Saugatuck, and was at my host’s house in good time. I made a grocery stop at a store I thought had bulk chutes but didn’t, and bought a small package of flour in hopes of baking some bread that night. I did.

Thanks to my wonderful hosts in Holland, I enjoyed a cold shower, great conversation, and a wonderful dinner. We had a lot of interests in common, including plant-based cooking, sourdough baking, social change, and sustainable building. With my loaf of bread cooling on the counter, I retreated to the cool basement for another great night of sleep.

Some people react with skepticism when I tell them I sleep at strangers’ houses on tour. I’ve only had good experiences so far, though. And of course, I don’t stay with just anybody. Warmshowers is a network for bike tourists specifically, and lets users leave reviews, as both hosts and guests. I tend to reach out to hosts that are 1) Highly reviewed and rated, 2) Women or a couple, and 3) Older. Often I end up staying with retirees who bike tour: a most excellent category of person. As common with women who travel solo, I largely avoid staying with single, un-retired men. I wish this precaution wasn’t rational, but it is. And precaution aside, it’s also a matter of comfort and relating. It’s nice to meet other women who tour.

In a recent hit article titled “A Woman Who Left Society To Live With Bears Weighs In on “Man or Bear”, my bike touring hero Laura Killingbeck writes:

Actually, the most common question I get about my travels is some version of, “Aren’t you afraid to bike/hike/travel alone as a woman?” By naming my gender, the implication is clear. What people really mean is, “Aren’t you afraid of men?”

My answer is yes. Obviously, there’s nuance. But as a generalization, yes! I am scared! I’m scared of lots of things: of getting bit by dogs, hit by cars, Lyme disease, injuries, and of course, bears. That’s just life. Fear can be managed with sensical action, and safety is an illusion: there’s risks and there’s rewards and you try your best to live well. For me, I don’t consider bike touring particularly dangerous, compared to “normal” life. And I’ll bet that the numbers agree.

In Jamestown, I cut through a library parking lot (as Komoot loves to route), and spotted a mulberry tree in the corner. I rolled up and picked a plump, purple berry from the richly laden, low-hanging branches. I lit up—it was sweet, really sweet. I’d sampled many mulberries on my tour already, but this was the best by far. I set my bike down and spent a solid ten minutes grazing with single-minded focus, making the most of this opportunity. My fingers were well-purpled by the time I’d had my fill. I silently thanked the tree before pedaling off again.

After Grand Rapids I entered the White Pine Trail, one of the most impressive, longest continuous bike trails in Michigan (and maybe the country).

By evening, I was kind of losing it from the monotony and grind. I reached my destination, another WS host, and camped in her backyard. The routine repeated: shower, tent, dinner, sleep.

The next day was heavily overcast, a treat for my sunburnt arms and legs, which had gotten sun rash for the first time ever. “No amount of sunscreen can protect me from getting burnt on top of burnt,” I had written down, resolving to get a long sleeve shirt at a thrift store (I didn’t). I went back on the White Pine to its end in Cadillac, where I had lunch in a park amphitheater while it lightly rained.

I cranked onwards towards Traverse City, getting onto US-131, which was awful: tiny shoulder, fast cars, too close, rude RV drivers. One RV blared their horn at me for a long time before blasting by at full speed with hardly 2 feet of clearance. That pissed me off. What is it about RVers? A vacation-inflated sense of entitlement? I considered emblazoning the name of the law about minimum passing distance on the back of a shirt.

I stayed with a family of cyclists at the edge of Traverse City and had the honor of being their first WS guest. You can bet I was on my best behavior (which, for an already painfully polite guest, was probably worse because it made me even more awkward). But I hope I made a good impression, because they were very nice and their spare bedroom was awesome, and I’d love for future WS cyclists to also be able to stay there.

By day 6, I was no longer waking up like a spring chicken. Also, the saddle sores had arrived. But today was only 70 miles, the last stretch to Boyne City, where I’d have a whole two days of staying put. I was still feeling pretty good, all in all, not nearly as ragged as I had during my first tour. I took USBR 31 up to Charlevoix, with a morning food stop at a Meijer, where I sat in front of the store chowing down on fruit.

Bike touring uses a mighty amount of energy, since you’re working some of the largest muscles in the body in a moderate aerobic zone, with occasional harder efforts, for 6-10 hours per day (for me). Eating enough became a real challenge: it needed planning. I like to eat very slowly compared to most people, so there was often simply not enough time in the day to refuel completely. I lost about two pounds per week while touring, despite eating well over double the food I eat during my normal life. But don’t take it as a weight loss strategy: it’s not a sustainable lifestyle by any account, and you can expect to regain the weight afterwards.

I think it’s important to try to maintain weight on tour, since rapid weight loss does no favors to the sharpness of your mind or physical performance in the short term. It’s about safety and enjoyment. I found that it worked well for me to have a medium-large breakfast and lunch, lots of carby snacks (at least every 2 hours of riding!) and a big dinner of ideally 1000+ calories before bed, with most of the veggies then.

I made it to Andi and Matt’s house in good time that afternoon. I was so happy to see them and complete this leg of the journey.

The weekend was filled with natural building fun, great people, and tasty food. We mixed light straw-clay insulation for the timber frame tiny house and packed it into the walls. It was so nice to meet their wonderful friends, and the cute baby and comparatively huge cat were a plus, too. The collection of natural building books was also fantastic.

Monday was a cool cloudy morning, which felt like an apology for the blazing conditions last week. I rolled out on the dirt road, spying the welcome sight of deep green hills and their pale blue coronas in the horizon. I had breakfast in Boyne City, a cute little place.

That evening, as I lay in my sleeping bag at another campground, I read some more of Martin Eden. It was one of the few books that stayed downloaded on my phone, so I read it over my trip. Jack London’s expressive, passionate writing drew me in. It is the colorful story of a man (young yet extremely worldly, uneducated yet extremely smart, rough yet extremely good-looking… what a convenient Mary Sue) driven to win over some aristocratic woman and become a successful writer. A lot of it is spent railing on how much London hated the publishing world. I found it thoroughly entertaining.

The next day took me through more of rural Michigan, through endless fields of corn and soybeans, most of which, in the U.S. is used for ethanol and animal feed¹², with only a small fraction towards feeding people (and an even smaller fraction of that in a whole-food form, as opposed to corn syrup and soybean oil).

I landed in Midland for the night, which felt confusing to enter, as I could literally see and feel the wealth levels jump precipitously. The streets were wide and smooth, lined with fancy houses with huge, mowed front yards, shaded by large trees. It soon made sense when I learned that Midland is Dow’s research and manufacturing headquarters. The chemical company, I was told, had great incentive to make and keep Midland an attractive place for the highly educated and highly paid to live their lives and raise their families. I stayed with a nice retired couple, where a golf tournament was starting literally outside my window.

The next morning, my host kindly joined me for the first 20 miles out to Bay City, a rather afflicted town in the crook of Michigan’s thumb, on Saginaw Bay. Formerly a lumber milling and shipbuilding hot spot, the population was at a 100-year low. The ubiquitous American scene of a city built on industry that had since left, leaving urban decay and feet too small for their crumbling boots. The parks with the bike paths were quite alright, though.

I skirted Saginaw, riding through plenty more corn fields, and arrived in Frankenmuth for lunch. I was excited to see a few other cyclists with panniers riding by sedately, and then I got downtown and was astounded. Frankenmuth is basically a German themed town, known for waiters in lederhosen and its gigantic Christmas trinket store. Downtown looks like a little Disney World but if it was about Bavaria. But what shocked me was the cicada infestation of cyclists that had alighted. Neon jerseys and spandexed bums winked amongst the tourists on every sidewalk. Piles of unsecured road bikes leaned up against pubs, cafes, and ice cream shops.

I had crossed paths with the hundreds of Pedal Across Lower Michigan riders, who were also on this segment of USBR 20. I felt that I ought to chat with these rare compatriots, but I was too tired, hungry, and introverted. I ate my lunch at the picnic table behind the grocery store, accompanied only briefly by an employee smoking a cigarette.

Per local recommendation, I camped at Otter Lake, a tiny town campground with the cutest rustic area I’d found yet. A finger of the lake separated the little strip of grass from the RV area, and unusually, I found myself comfortable enough for a late afternoon doze under the tree. I did not speak to anyone except for the boy poaching tadpoles from the shore for his pet salamander.

The next morning, I left leisurely at 8, looking forward to a short 60-mile day back to my parent’s house in Metro Detroit. I made the poor decision of taking the “fastest” road route, which included some of the worst highway riding I’d ever experienced, enhanced further by some Komoot nav-rage.

I was there by early afternoon, feeling thoroughly road-beaten now that I had the maximum comfort of home to compare it to. I ate, cooked, pawed through the kitchen, laundered, repacked, and had dinner with my dad.

Prior to this May, I hadn’t been home to Michigan for nearly three years, as I quit flying in 2021. The return gave me a visceral realization that I was never quite as comfortable around anyone as my parents. I had forgotten what it was like to not really need any filter at all, and despite our differences, it made me appreciate being home anew.

The next morning I headed towards Toledo. It was an uneventful ride: 50 miles of rather utilitarian (read: ugly, highway-side) bike paths, then 50 miles of rural roads.

Toledo was another prime, unsettling example of post (and present) industrial decay. As I entered the city, the warm, damp air filled with smells. Super wide, empty streets stretched through run-down neighborhoods, and the occasional glimpse of red brick road was exposed by holes in the concrete. Then I entered the gleaming downtown, full of expensive restaurants and hotels, but similarly empty. It was gone in the blink of an eye.

A wonderful surprise awaited me that evening in the home of my hosts, a pastor and teacher. They were lifelong touring cyclists, active, car-free, and flight-free well into the years where most people would think that not possible. Like me, whether it was 3 or 300 miles, bike commuting was just how they did it. It was also really cool to meet deeply religious people who seemed to truly walk their talk, donating heavily to the poor, supporting LGBT+ inclusion, advocating for climate action, and more. They were delightful, humorous people to be around, and it warmed my heart to meet people who had been so committed for so long to doing good in the world, and pretty successful at it as far as I could tell.

We ate together, swapped touring tales (such as things we had found beside the road and consumed), and I slept in their office, surrounded by divinity school diplomas and clerical robes.

The next morning I battled my way out of Toledo and its surrounding suburban hellhole (I have a grudge against a particular Amazon van driver now), and then got onto the North Coast Inland Trail, where I instead crawled against heat and monstrous headwinds all afternoon. I was nearly finished.

That night, I camped at a small campground just off the trail. I sat at my little metal table, spooning beans from a can and distantly observing the few other campers. A couple car campers were smokily starting a fire. Two old men sat outside their cabin, seemingly oblivious to mosquitos in their shorts.

I was beginning to tire of my self-imposed loneliness, but still unwilling to approach random strangers to relieve it. It feels a little overmuch, but I am just so on guard when I travel. It’s a vulnerable state, you see: exhausted, hungry, alone, on a mission, with nothing but a few microns thickness of tent fabric, a knife, a can of bear spray, and my wits between me and any potential threats. In my imagination, I confidently ambled up to fellow campers, made small talk, and perhaps scored myself a bit of grub or hot coffee the next morning. In practice, I set up my tent, ate my dinner, and went straight to sleep.

I had an indulgent last morning in Ohio. I ate breakfast in my tent and then dozed for another hour before packing up. Only 35 miles to Cleveland, where I had a late night train to catch to Pennsylvania.

That evening, a friendly hotel receptionist allowed me to sit in peace in the lobby until the Amtrak station opened at 1 AM. I boarded the train and the major part of my journey was unceremoniously over.

From Cleveland, I rode Amtrak to Pittsburgh, then Lancaster, where I stayed a night before biking to Fawn Grove, where I attended an earthen plaster course hosted by Sigi Koko and Becky Little (a story for another day).

Then I biked to Baltimore to catch the Northeast Regional back to Boston, which dumped me in New York City for a night due to track problems. On a soggy Sunday afternoon in July, I returned to Boston and started to build the next part of my life.

People ask me what my favorite parts of this trip were. There were so many: cold showers on hot days, meeting wonderful, interesting people who I immediately felt at home with, eating an entire pint of vegan ice cream outside the grocery store (not too proud of that one), yelling freely into cornfields from the burn of climbing, being cheered on by the rare random stranger, waking to birdsong, mulberries and serviceberries right off the tree, belting songs really badly as I rode, the pure, free feeling of speeding down the path, wind in my face. It’s funny, no matter how punishing of days I put myself through, it’s never more than a single rest day until I’m elated to be on a bike at all again.

I finally feel like I’m really a bicycle tourist. I’m looking forward to the next tours, wherever they may take me and with whom.

See you on the trails!

1. Corn: 40% to ethanol, 36% to animal feed. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/ ↩︎
2. Soybeans: 5% to biofuels, 70% to animal feed https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexistence-soybeans-factsheet.pdf ↩︎

Bonus: my tour playlist (Ride responsibly)