My Michigan

I guess I can say "My Michigan" since I was born and raised there. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to July, when Vicky and I will be spending just over two weeks in a rented cottage located on the southern shore of "Gitche Gumee." The Ojibwe name for Lake Superior, meaning "great sea."

Our trip will allow me to reconnect with my most favorite place in the whole world — the Upper Peninsula. My years as a Yooper hold a very special place in my heart.

While part of the agenda includes catching up with longtime friends, like Barb and Jon on Monocle Lake, and visiting old haunts like Pictured Rocks, Whitefish Point, the Antlers restaurant in the Sault, and other spots, one other item is on the "must do" vacation list. Yes, you might have guessed ... go for miles and miles — and more miles — of bicycle rides.

I've already got my hat for the occasion.

The machine of choice — as it appears I will only have space for one — will be my Specialized Crux cyclocross bike, good for any kind of surface, whether it's pavement, gravel, or sand. I plan on cruising along Lakeshore Drive, the road near our summer digs, which offers continuous views of the Big Lake, and journeying atop nearby Mission Hill, with its spectacular vista of the St. Marys River. There also will be two-track dirt roads in vast abundance to bomb around.

One location that I hope to go for a pedal is the Iron Ore Heritage Trail. It is a 47-mile, year-round, multi-use, interpretive trail that crosses the Marquette Iron Range, which dominated U.S. iron ore production from approximately 1880 until about 1900. The trail, which was largely completed in 2013, follows mostly abandoned railroad corridors that were used to bring lumber to furnaces and forges, and iron ore to the Lake Superior Harbor. I hope I can talk Jon into coming along for the ride on his bright red Trek.

I got in touch with Carol Fulsher, administrator of the Iron Ore Heritage Trail, who said, "You will have a wonderful adventure. The beauty of Lake Superior never gets old. I look at it every day."

I cannot wait for July to arrive! Stay safe!

'Thought for the day'

"I took care of my wheel as one would look after a Rolls Royce. If it needed repairs I always brought it to the same shop. ... Often he would do a job for me without pay, because, as he put it, he never saw a man so in love with his bike as I was." — Henry Miller, American writer and artist

From "Words To Ride By ... Thoughts on Bicycling" by Michael Carabetta (Chronicle Books, 2017)