Last Friday, June 28th, I rode from Sudbury, where the night before I stayed at my brother Jean-Yves’ home where he and I watched Biden’s train wreck Presidential Debate. Saturday it was on to Sault Ste. Marie where I crossed into Michigan to begin Retirement Ride II riding around Lake Superior. My first stop was at the Point Iroquois Light Station.
From there I drove along the shoreline for a while and headed inland to Newberry to find the Americas Best Value Inn, a task that for some unknown reason presented a challenge to Lucille (those of you who have been following this blog for some years will recognize Lucille as my GPS companion). Dinner that night at a small Grill and Bar next door to the hotel was a generous piece of amazingly good lightly battered deep fried perch with fries in a paper-lined red plastic baskets and a bottle of Sam Adams Lager. Except for the overcast skies and the on and off rain, the tour was starting off promisingly.
On Saturday June 29th I rode from Newberry to Baraga Michigan with much of the route on roads along the shore of the Great Lake. I stopped along the way to look out over the water, including at Munising. The second picture shows a section of a very long beach at the point where the Salmon River enters Lake Superior.
I arrived at Carla’s Inn in Baraga, where the lady herself came to give me my key and show me how to connect to the wifi, though it was mostly me showing her what her network was and how to enter the password. Carla’s Inn is an oldish motel in the middle of nowhere accros the road from Keweenaw Bay, whose restaurant which is still listed on the web burnt down (some time ago). The weather being nice and it being early and all, I decided I would take a ride up to Copper Harbour at the end of Route 41, get some dinner there and return to my motel with plenty of daylight to spare. Well that’s before the rain started. I made it as far as Houghton, had a decent whitefish late lunch at Four Suns Fish and Chips and decided to backtrack to Carla’s. The next morning I awoke to this sunrise view of the lake outside my window.
On Sunday I rode from Baraga to Duluth stopping for a good bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast and coffee breakfast at Antonio’s in Bergland. The road I followed goes through a section of the Ottawa National Forest
and through the part of Wisconsin along the shore of Lake Superior between Saxon Harbor and Superior, the city across the bridge from Duluth Minnesota.
Duluth is a city at the furthest southern tip of Lake Superior. A large section of its waterfront has been made into a pedestrian space with a boardwalk and parks and railway tracks on which the North Shore Scenic Railway passes.
I could easily walk from my quaint five room hotel, the Edison Station Inn
in a relocated railway station in the park, to the Fitgers building, Minnesota’s oldest brewery where I had a nice beer and later returned for an excellent steak dinner at the bar of the Boat Club Restaurant. Two of my bar mates were a very friendly elderly couple of Michiganders who said that, after what had happened in the past years and the previous week, they were worried speechless about what was happening in/to their country. I admitted that as a Canadian I was perplexed and preoccupied by what we were seeing in the country just to our south.
On Monday I rode north along the west shore of Lake Superior backup into Canada. I stopped to visit the Grand Portage National Monument Heritage Center from which I took this picture.
Grand Portage was the location of the Hudson Bay Company furthest west trading post for many years and as such was an important commercial hub.
A little further up the road at a lookout by the lake a couple of tourists from Winnipeg offered to take the following picture me.
After crossing the border I headed to Nipigon on Highway 17 from where I would take Highway 11, the furthest north west-east route to North Bay via Hearst, Kapuskasing,
Cochrane, Timmins and a number of small towns, including my favourite, Moonbeam.
Tonight I am in Kirkland Lake; tomorrow it’s on to North Bay, and then to the cottage on Lake of Bays where Jane will be joining me on Friday.
