It rained off and on all night in Mt Pleasant but the weather cleared around 10:00. I thought I might have to intrude on Jenny and Sammy for another day at their house but with the clear weather I headed out for the day.
My stay with Jenny and Sammy was terrific. They were fantastic hosts and the next cyclists they host are in for a nice stay with them. It was also great to have seen Lynne as well. If they ever get to Wenatchee they have a place to stay!
Once on the road I found a nice bike path leading out of town to the south. It went for a few miles and then turned east which was fine so I kept following it to Shepard. I was going to be picking my way southward toward the city of Lancing, the capitol. Well, not Lancing but skirting around the suburbs.
Riding through this part of Michigan started looking and feeling a lot like Iowa. The terrain was flattening out just as the latter part of yesterday was. There was a lot of corn and soy beans just like Iowa too. And it was getting hotter and more humid. The sound of crickets and frogs as the background noise in northern Michigan was again replaced with the sound of cicadas.
There were more trees to remind me that I really wasn’t in Iowa. And there was the occasional dairy farm along the way too.
Dairy farms are more a part of what you would expect from Wisconsin, not Iowa. I guess Michigan is a hybrid state when it comes to its agriculture.
As I mentioned earlier I did not want to go into Lancing. I picked the Sleepy Hollow State Park as my goal for the day. It might be a little dicey though. It is Labor Day Weekend and campgrounds tend to fill up, especially ones near urban areas. The Sleepy Hollow SP is only about 12-15 miles from Lancing.
Pulling into the park, I was relieved to find that they had a “rustic” camp site that was available. It is “rustic” because it does not have a place to park the a car and you have to haul your gear into the site. Of course, this is right up my alley.
I set up my tent, but asked my camping neighbors if they had seen an updated weather report. They said it was 100 percent that we would get rain in the morning. I put the rainfly on!