It rained and rained all night. I stayed perfectly dry and warm, but I was in the tent for 14 hours!
Obviously, I got a tremendously slow start this morning. I barely made it out of the campground still in the morning. It stopped raining, but it was still looking like rain so I did something I had not done all trip so far. I wore my rain pants. The first time all trip I had long pants on while riding.
My route would hug the Lake Michigan coast today for the most part. And it would be a lot of navigating. Lots of turns.
The “Lower” part of Michigan still looks a lot like the U-P so far, but there is more farming down here. Still lots of trees and hills as it turns out.
I had lunch in Cross Village at a convenience store that sold sandwiches. It was the best I could do today for lunch. I did take a short cut straight south instead of the longer shoreline route to save some time today because of the late start.
Just before entering Harbor Springs, a bee flew under my bike helmet and stung me. That was not fun, no not at all.
Riding through Harbor Springs, I ran across a lady who was a ride leader for an organized tour through area. She loaned me their bike pump so I could top off my tires. She said my forehead was swelling up pretty good from the bee sting so she also gave me a small bag of ice to put in it. That seemed to help. She also gave me some navigation tips for traveling south and some camping information. She was a great help.
From Harbor Springs, I got to ride on bike trails most of the way through Petoskey and through Charlevoix.
My camp ground was just 3 miles out of Charlevoix. Fisherman’s Island State Park. It was very basic and sparsely used. Still it was nice, right on the lake shore. The wind was blowing on the beach so I took my rainfly down there and got it mostly dried out. That allowed me to set up a dry tent which is always my goal.
Getting ready for bed, I took off all my rain gear. It never rained a single drop on me the whole day.