Dunelands and Michigan Wine Country

We've been talking about this trip for a year, and you're all waiting for results! Hopefully our first week won't disappoint. It's been hard and exciting, and we took pictures.

The first night was at the Indiana Dunes at Beverly Shores. It rained a little and we ate a lot of eggs. The lake was beautiful the next morning.



The gas station where we bought the wood and eggs has the best softserv ice cream anywhere.

Here's the lake. All along the Indiana shore there are beautiful cottages. If you are rich and from Chicago, you may have one.



Wow, huge cooling tower. The mist made this look very ominous. It is some sort of power plant with water cascading out of the base. We got lost here and a guy in a pickup guided us down a dirt road to a village of pastel houses that looked like Loompa Land.



Andrea loves Michigan. This is the border. Shortly after we stopped for beers at the American Legion and watched a one-armed badass shoot pool. The tab was two fifty for both beers and they served us even though we are not vetrans.



This whole area was super pretty. There are so many old cottages and vacation homes. It is a little get-away for anyone who can afford it- I had fantasies about living in one of these places and zipping around in a antique British roadster. This fence is ancient and the house behind it is almost too far back to see.



We've been camping out for the past three nights. This is one of the nice moments. The a raccoon stole our trailmix this night and we fought over how I lost Andrea's flashlight.



I had no idea that Michigan had so many vineyards. It looks like France or something, there are some hilltops where grape vines are all you can see in every direction. It makes my feel justified in wearing my euro cycling cap.



This place was full of old people and the menu was super cheap. The party at the rear table were talking about all of the animals they had seen, and what was required to kill them. Standard small town fair, growing up in Northern Wisconsin I am used to this, except these old ladies were talking about totally innocuous creatures like squirrels, and the way to take care of them was "find a guy who's got a gun". I had an awesome chocolate malt that cost a dollar twenty-five.



I'm smiling cause there's no rain, I'm surrounded by grape vines, and I've only been riding thirty miles so my shoulders don't feel like someone's been stabbing them with a screwdriver yet. We've been averaging sixty mile days, which some people may think is pansy, but look at all of the stuff we are carrying. Try putting all of the stuff in you car, bedroom, dresser, and kitchen in a bag and dragging it up hills. It's actually more fun than it sounds.



Cheers, we will be in Flint soon and you will get another update!