thevcblog: Michigan 26 Day 3 - Newberry to Sault Ste. Marie

I started the day at a nice campground (once a KOA) where unfortunately the camp store doesn't open until 9. I'm not going to wait around all morning for coffee, so the night before, I went to the camp store before it closed and filled one of my water bottles with the cold leftover coffee from that morning.

So I'm happily reading the news on my laptop and drinking cold coffee on a not so level picnic table, and the water bottle of coffee fell over and dumped a ton of coffee all over my fancy, expensive MacBook Neo.

I quickly wiped it off with a dirty bike jersey, and it seemed to be fine, so I packed it up and went about the day.

But when I got to Sault Ste. Marie and started working on my trip update, after about 20 minutes it died. The screen went black. Which is why I'm writing this a day late on a new cheap Chromebook.

It was a very hot, brutal ride today. It got up to 88 degrees and it was pretty humid. I was pretty roasted when I got in.

And this campground, which caters to RVs, has no shade whatsoever, and no lounge area or lodge or any place like that with air conditioning.

The way to deal with this is to go take a shower in your bike clothes and let them dry while you wear them. And keep doing this until it cools down at night.

The day started great, very pleasant riding, along 40 more miles of M-28, which mostly had a huge shoulder.

Eventually, I had to get off M-28, my companion for 100 miles or so, to go get some food. The best option for that being the tiny waterfront town of Brimley. Strava found a rail trail that is a straight diagonal shot to Brimley.

Unfortunately, it's a trail for snowmobiles and ORVs (which are very popular up here). The surface is loose gravel and sand, and it's not bikeable on a touring bike.

So I had to do zig-zaggy back roads to get to my pizza in Brimley.

And while I was eating way more of this huge, delicious pizza than I should have, in air-conditioned comfort, it was getting hotter and hotter outside.

Which made riding the last 15 miles to the campground pretty unpleasant. I was so overheated and overstuffed, I never got hungry for dinner.

This was a pretty nice RV park. It's super dog friendly. The bathrooms and showers are clean and nice. It's on the waterfront, which is the St. Mary's river that connects Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

It's a major shipping channel. There is a constant parade of giant ships going by, and they all blast their horns when they pass.