Day 44: we only have two more states left..

Hey y’all - Dustin here. Today we thanked the lord as we left our campsite behind the church and set off to grab some grub for breakfast. We stopped by Nick’s again but sadly the people working dinner shift last night weren’t there anymore so we had to get used to a new waitress - how dare they not work 24/7? Anyway we loaded up on pancakes, eggs, breakfast meats, and potatos before leaving the town of Durand at a cool 10am with the goal of 95 miles. Now you may be asking yourself, “Wow Dustin! You guys must go pretty fast if you can go 95 miles starting at 10 and still finish at a reasonable hour!” And I would normally respond with yeah you know we go pretty quick given we have bags and elevation gains and normally headwinds for some reason even though we are going east. But today I’d just laugh because we didn’t get in until after 7 - and although Julia didn’t cry today - it may have been (at least to me) one of the hardest days of the trip… I guess the big man upstairs didn’t like that I peed on the holy back lawn bushes…

So what happened you ask? Well I’m glad you asked! The first 40 or so miles today was almost exclusively on gravel - and not like that nice gravel you’d find on a bike path or something - that soul crushing gravel that has so many bumps you wonder if this is just a ploy by big automotive to sell more cars.. these roads were so bad that Brian’s bungie cord broke, my headlight fell of twice, and Leo even got a flat after bragging every day for the last two weeks that he hasn’t touched his tires since the start of the trip (he must have peed on the holy bushes too I guess).

Anyway, after taking nearly 5 hours to do the first 40 miles we were pretty beaten down and thinking maybe we should go all the way to the Canadian border today.. it was almost 3 pm by this time and we were pretty content eating our subway and ice cream sandwiches 55 miles from our destination. And even more tempting we wanted to take a ride in the banana car:

But in all my glory of being the absolute hardo of the trip - I made everyone set out again with the same goal - get the hell out of Michigan. Sorry Michigan… but you have bad roads, bad water, bad weather, and honestly not much to do or see… sorry if anyone loves Michigan. What I will give them though - is they are marketing GENIUSES - because I really was out here thinking that Michigan was going to be an awesome state before I had ever been there! But alas - if you don’t know, now you know… 

Anyway - god must have forgave us for the bush incident because the day got a lot better after our break - we got a beautiful trail to ride on with a lot of downhill so we could go pretty fast, and then the rest was roads (PAVED ROADS)! So we did the last 55 miles in less time than we did the first 40 and it was honestly just what we needed not to fully give up on the day. 

We rolled into the algonac state park just after 7 and Julia, Brian, Leo, and Pat got some pizza delivered. While I went out on the town with one of my best friends from college (Hayley) who happens to live right outside of Detroit and you know since she actually has a car she could come visit in less than an hour instead of taking a full day. So Hayley and I went out to some random bar because everything here closes at like 8pm and we had some fired food and caught up on everything that happened in the last year and a half since we last saw each other. It was a nice cap off to our time here in Michigan - but I am really looking forward to being out of here. Tomorrow we take the ferry to Ontario Canada where our host in London said he will have a big pot of curry waiting for us - I CAN’T WAIT! So come back tomorrow to see how our 90+ mile into Canada went! 

P.S. if you didn’t know - now that we are leaving Michigan that means we only have two states left to do… New York and Connecticut - just 650 miles! Hopefully we’ll be home in a little over a week! Cheers!