128: sweetroll, fog & dew, sluggish breakfast, stapled, second look, pain, the bishop, options, 5 by 3, tactical taco, one down, stop, dog chase, sunset silhouette, a tough grade, snowball, vertiginous, the doc & the dee, jungle gym

September 14, 2025

L'Anse to Houghton

When we woke up this morning, the view was completely different. This was taken from the same location as the sunset picture yesterday.

This is what I bought yesterday at the Hilltop Restaurant, "Home of the Famous Sweetroll." It's bigger than my head, and likely has more filling.

Everything was soaked with dew this morning, including my tent's rainfly.

We sat around for a long time waiting for the fog to burn off, but it never did.

This guy was sliding across the top of Lori's tent.

In the middle of our conversation we heard a "plop," and I saw that it had missed my hot chocolate by mere inches.

As we were packing up to leave, Lori noticed her tire was flat.... another staple?? Really??

She replaced it with the patched tire from several days ago....

...and in record time we were back in business.

As we were leaving I stopped at the pier where we were yesterday and took some photos from the exact same locations. They look much different today.

I made sure to wear my Hi-Viz vest and turn on my front and rear lights.

About ten minutes into the ride, Lori was pedaling up the steep hill leaving L'Anse and felt a terrific pain in her groin. There was no possibility of continuing so she stopped, the thought that the trip was over entering her mind, but after a few minutes the pain subsided enough for her to be able to ride and she determinedly climbed back on the bike.

After just a few seconds of riding she felt something "pop" in the same area and again had to stop. At this point her concern about having to abandon the tour became a contaminant. We walked the bikes the rest of the way to the Subway Deli, then grabbed a couple of sandwiches for take out and contemplated our next step.

For Lori, always buoyant, this felt like an anchor.... to have come all this way and not be able to complete our next-to-last day of of the tour? After waiting a few more minutes, she decided to continue, at least to our next stop, the Bishop Baraga Shrine, which is just up the road.

Upon arrival, we slowly wandered around taking photos of the Bishop as the fog swirled across the park.

Bishop Baraga was called “The Snowshoe Priest” because he each year he traveled 600-800 miles in the winter through deep snow on snowshoes to minister to remote communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He was fluent in Slovenian (his native tongue), French, German, Latin, and Ojibwe, and compiled an Ojibwe-English dictionary, after which he translated religious texts for the Ojibwe people. He was also "an outspoken defender of the right for Native peoples to live on their traditional lands," a stance quite opposite to the common attitude about "The Indian Problem" at that time.

The shrine, a 60-foot-tall statue with 8 tons of copper sheets fastened to a steel frame, was built in 1972 and can withstand the high winds coming off Lake Superior. The Bishop stands on a bluff overlooking Keweenaw Bay, holding snowshoes and blessing Lake Superior.

<><><><>

The fog coming in from the lake gave the shrine an eerie sensation.

With Lori in the picture you get a better sense of the scale: as you can see, she's tiny. The real Baraga stood 5 foot 4 inches (1.6 meters) and weighed 150 lbs (68 kg).

After taking some pictures, we sat down to eat our lunches and contemplated our options.

For Lori, riding here from the Subway remained painful, but tolerable. Thinking it through, we considered her two choices: stay here or continue.

What's the worst-case scenario (and her biggest fear) if we continue? It's that we make it halfway to Houghton, our evening stop, and the pain becomes so severe that she can't continue. At that point, we reasoned, there are still options:
(a) hire an Uber - I checked to make sure they're available in this area, and found that not only do they service L'Anse and Houghton, the cost to get picked up halfway was very reasonable, and not exorbitant as I had expected it to be.
(b) stealth camp - There are 10.2 million people in Michigan, but only 3.16% of them live in the U.P. That's a little more than 320,000 people living in an area the size of West Virginia, which means that we should easily be able to find a lovely spot to stealth camp where no one would ever see her. She has everything she needs - food, water and a water filter, shelter, a power bank, cell service, and even a good book to read for entertainment. Tomorrow morning I can get the rental car and come back to pick her up.

Knowing all of that took some pressure off and she decided to continue and play it by ear.

This was our latest start yet. We kept waiting for the fog to burn off but it never did, then when we decided to leave Lori's tire was flat. Patching it created another delay so by the time we left the campground it was almost 1:45non.

We took a break when Lori's leg began hurting, then another one to pick up lunch, another to see the Baraga Shrine, and one to eat lunch. By the time we left the mists swirling around the Bishop, it was after 3:00 and we had pedaled a scant five miles.

The fog never burned off, but we eventually climbed above it when we turned away from the bay. The low-lying cloud loitering over L'Anse remained visible from above for the first fifteen miles of our ride.

As it turns out, these signs don't make a good foothold. They bend too easily and couldn't support my weight.

I stopped for a picture, letting Lori know that our next turn would be a right on Liberty Lane.

I wondered why she didn't stop until I came to the intersection and saw that it was named Democracy Drive. It made me wonder if we understand the meaning of such difficult concepts as "democracy," "liberty," "republic," and "freedom."

Here's a sign I've never seen before. Because of the misspelling, I suspect it's a home-made attempt to sound official and scary when they're really just growing weed.

"Trunklines" are major thoroughfares, and a term I haven't seen outside the U.P.

I suspect that there are more snowmobiles than cars during the winter months.

It looks like someone has finally weaponized Mexican food, turning it into a weapon of mass digestion, or perhaps indigestion. I'll be fortifying my defenses with a collection of antidiarrheals and antiemetics because I plan to launch an all-out offensive, not only against tacos, but burritos, huevos rancheros, and fajitas.

As I was riding onto the gravel driveway of this residence to get a picture, a dog started barking at me from inside the house. In addition to the dog guarding the place, its owner was keeping an eye out as well. When I heard the word “Stop,” spoken softly but firmly, I hoped it was the woman telling her dog to quit barking instead of an invitation for me to stop in for some dinner and conversation. I pretended not to hear and, after snapping this shot, I nonchalantly pedaled away.

On the subject of dogs, one briefly chased me this afternoon.... the first in ?a thousand miles? More? I can't even remember, and have been fortunate in that I haven't had a single "dog incident" during my entire trip. The dog chasing me today was the most adorable beagle I've ever seen, and I was tempted to pull over and play with it for a minute, but decided to keep riding.

After not receiving a response from one Warm Showers host and an apologetic decline from another, as of 6:00 we still had no place to stay. Sunset is in slightly over an hour, and it's already starting to get dark.

The closer we got to Houghton, the more hills we encountered.

We stopped here for a brief snack before continuing. The sun continues to drop like an anchor and we're quickly losing light.

As we were nearing Houghton, racing the sun, a young guy in his thirties with blonde dreadlocks flagged us down. We had seen him pull into a long gravel driveway, then wait for us beside his car until we reached him.

He had the aroma of someone who hadn't bathed in a few days or, more likely, a few weeks, and was evidently unburdened by an ability to smell.

In spite of the odor he was quite friendly, and had only stopped us to say that he hosts travelers all the time, literally about a hundred people every year through HipCamp and CouchSurfing, plus several websites I didn't recognize. Surprisingly, he had never heard of Warm Showers.

He'd seen us as he was pulling into his driveway and kindly waited to offer us a place to sleep. Had we not made nonrefundable hotel reservations five minutes earlier it would've been tempting, depending on whether we would be sharing a room with a person whose aroma has the potential to cause my nose hairs to catch fire, and also depending on the number of gallons of air freshener available.

Owning it (unless their last name is Hicks)

For those of you who are curious, the Hi-Viz "W.G. Clark" vest is on loan from a friend. He and his wife were walking across the U.S. when a guy from this company stopped him and said "That's not bright enough. You're gonna get hit," then gave him the vest. It was a nice gesture.

With the exception of Day 111, this was the most difficult climb of my tour, not just because of the grade, but because of the length of the climb.

Approaching this climb, I thought there might be some sort of routing mistake because what rose in front of us was more of a wall than a road, and I readied myself to accept the fact that my future was about to include a long walk accompanied by 135 pounds of bike and bags. Knowing I can climb a 12% grade at least for short distance, I began the 1.5-mile ascent.

It didn't take long for my body to remind me that I'm an old man. After about a quarter of a mile my legs began burning in earnest, and shortly thereafter I was convinced they were going to spontaneously combust. Approaching 3/4 mile I realized that I wasn't going to make it much longer: I had shifted into first gear early on then, a couple of minutes later, tried downshifting into first gear again.... then again a moment after that.... not a good omen.

A few cars passed, their engines straining as much as their occupants' credulity as they peered out the window at me. I pressed on until, even taking gasping breaths, I was slowly losing the battle for oxygenation. It was becoming time for that long walk up the hill.

However, with a mind of their own, my feet continued pedaling until, eventually, time itself disappeared and my entire existence shrank to a three-part harmony: staring at the road in front of my wheel, breathing, and turning the crank one single revolution. Then one more. Then one more.

When my breath started sounding like an accordion with holes and my heart hammered away like a gatling gun, there came a point where I had reached my physical limits - I just wasn't getting enough air. It was time for this symphony's coda.

That's when I felt it: a slight decrease in the grade, a fraction of a percentage point as it became incrementally less difficult. Another fraction, then another. I was still gasping like a carp coming up for food, but at that point I felt a second wind from somewhere deep, or perhaps a twelfth wind, and I was so close that not much could've prevented me from continuing - maybe a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream on the side of the road - but that's about it.

Later, when I was reviewing the ride, I found that we did more climbing today than any other day of my entire tour. Curious about how steep the grade was, I also reviewed that, and am convinced that it's incorrect. I'm 100% sure it was steeper than what was recorded.

Lori is a stronger climber than me and would've made it if it not for her groin pain. She made the right decision to push the bike, thus avoiding further injury.

Note that it's a holmes wrecker, not a home wrecker.

Houghton is another quaint Michigan town, with plenty to do and see.

Regarding The World's Biggest and Best, in 2013, Michigan Technological University students rolled the world's largest snowball. It had a circumference of 32.94 feet (10.04 meters) and stood 9.28 feet tall, weighing 3-4 tons. Additionally, Houghton previously held the record for the world's largest snowball fight, but lost the crown to Saskatoon, Canada in 2016 when they rounded up 7,681 participants. Houghton holding any world record at any point in time is impressive, because there are only 8,341 residents - at 317,480, Saskatoon has 38 times as many people.

As I rolled into town, the first thing I noticed was that the streets go straight up from the waterfront. Peering down from the nosebleed-inducing vertiginous heights and crushing my brakes as I eased my way down the road at an atypically slow speed, the first thought that sprang to my mind was: "Will I ever be able to wear this pair of shorts again?"

My second thought was: "What did people do 150 years ago when the streets became icy?" The roads are ridiculously shear, and there doesn't seem to be any way that a wagon or cart could make it down without sliding all the way to the bottom and exploding into splinters. I pictured piles of hay bales or some other barrier for safety because even now, without ice or snow, anything with wheels had better have the stopping power of onion breath on a first date.

If it's any indication, my maximum speed, without pedaling, going down one of the hills prior to reaching Houghton was 36.4 mph (58.6 kph). Excluding the times it's been attached to the rack on the back of my car, that is, without a doubt, the fastest this bicycle has ever traveled.... and the grades in Houghton were even more precipitous.

Although I took this to get a picture of the church, it gives you a slight indication of the steepness of the roads.

This was taken from the curb right in front of the building so, again, you can see how steep it is.

The World’s First Professional Hockey Association was born at this site in 1903.

In 1898, “Doc” Gibson and his team were expelled from the Ontario Hockey Association in Kitchener, Ontario, for accepting cash (a few ten dollar gold coins). He moved to Ann Arbor where he received a Bachelor of Science degree, then to Detroit where he graduated from dental school. With degree in hand, he settled in Houghton to start a dental practice which, in my estimation, was a wise choice considering the effects of hockey on teeth and the number of hockey enthusiasts in the region.

In addition to practicing dentistry he continued to play hockey and established the Portage Lake Hockey Team. In 1902 he paid his players to compete in a two-game series against the Montreal Wanderers in front of 5,000 people at the castle-like Amphidrome and, with that initial success, realized a league could be sustained here in this hotbed of hockey. This prompted him to set up the world’s first professional hockey association: the International Professional Hockey League. In addition to the Houghton Portage Lakes, it included the Calumet Miners, Sault Ste. Marie Indians, the Pittsburgh Pro Hockey Club and the Canadian Soo.

The Amphidrome burned down in 1927 and “The Dee,” as this new stadium is called, now stands on the site.

We stopped at Jimmy John's Deli to get something for dinner and started toward our hotel just as the sun was dipping below the horizon.

At some point along the way, Lori's sandwich made a daring escape from her rear rack so we split mine and ate most of the rest of our other remaining food.

Although you can't tell because the camera lights up the picture, it was dark by the time we reached the hotel.

There was just one bedroom so we flipped a coin to determine who slept where: heads I get the sleeper sofa and tails Lori gets the sleeper sofa. When it turned up heads, I unfolded it and got ready for bed.

Although comfortable enough as a couch, it was easily the second worst bed I've ever attempted to sleep on in my life, the worst being a bed of mulch beneath some bushes in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.... although, if I really think about it, it's probably even worse than that because the reason the mulch was so uncomfortable was the 50-degree temperature when all I had to keep me warm was a pair of Levi's and short-sleeved shirt - not even a light jacket.

The reason for the discomfort was the slice of bologna thinly disguised as a mattress. It simply wasn't thick enough to pad the horizontal bars, so it felt like I was sleeping on a Jungle Gym. Using some uncharacteristic problem-solving skills, I simply turned sideways, slipping between the bars, and slept quite comfortably in what felt like a hammock.

It feels weird that tomorrow is the last day of the tour.

This is what Marquette looked like last night. That would've been nice to see.

Heart

Comment

Link

Today's ride: 47 miles (76 km)
Total: 3,399 miles (5,470 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	12
Comment on this entry	Comment	3

Karen PoretHow is Lori doing? I am worried she needs more than a “good nights” sleep..🙏
Reply to this comment
3 months ago

Rich FrasierSorry to hear that Lori is suffering. Last days of tours are always somewhat surreal for me. Hang in there!!
Reply to this comment
2 months ago

Bill ShaneyfeltGroin injuries are painful, and sometimes take years to heal... I truly sympathize! Lotta guts to continue like that.
Reply to this comment
2 months ago