Day 6 - Along the Grand and Maple Rivers

Route
Lowell, MI to St. John's, MI - 50 miles
For details of part 1 of today's route, click here.
For details of part 2 of today's route, click here.

Weather
Sky condition:  Partly cloudy to clear
Temperature:  60 to 80
Visibility:  Unlimited
Precipitation:  Threatened, but none
Wind:  Light tailwind
Comments:  Really nice day, good riding weather

Significant Events
- Met up with my cousin Paul and Bilma
- Visited Ionia Rod Shop
- Had ice cream at "Quality Dairy" in Fowler, MI
- Half the trip completed

Today's Song
"Redneck Friend" by Jackson Browne

Wildlife Observed
Yellow warbler
Lots of road kill

Today's Ride
Started out with a great breakfast (omelet for me, French toast for Ileana) at the "Backwater Cafe". All home cooked, and the bread is made on the premises. Delicious!

I had planned a kind of zig-zag route to stay off of the main roads but I found out that most of the east-west Rails-to-Trails route was incomplete and still made up of railroad ballast. Not a good surface for a fully loaded touring bike so we decided to roll east on Michigan Highway 21. This is a fairly busy road but it has shoulders between 2 and 4 feet, and we have actually found Michigan drivers to be very cool when it comes to passing us. They either slow and wait for a good time to pass or go way left, across the centerline, and give plenty of room.

M-21 has some "gently rolling hills" and generally follows the Grand and Maple rivers between Grand Rapids and St. John's. It made for a pretty scenic ride and I think it helped keep the ride a little cooler being by the rivers. I saw the rail trail paralleling us in a few spots; the condition of it confirmed that we had made the right choice staying on the road.

In Ionia, I met up with a friend of Paul's and got to observe some hot rod builds at Ionia Rod Shop.

Next, we stopped in Fowler because there is a place there (Quality Dairy) that makes their own delicious ice cream.  The featured flavor this month is "Fried Ice Cream". It isn't really fried, and I have no idea what is in it, but it tasted like "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" cereal. I had that and Ileana had "Cashew". Both were excellent. If you see a Quality Dairy in your travels, stop in for some ice cream...

After heading north to Maple Rapids, we turned back east and made our way to Paul and Bilma's. We made it to their place in good time and chilled for a while, catching up and telling stories. We went out for dinner and had some good Mexican food in DeWitt.  That certainly hit the spot, and set us up for a good night's sleep!

We will spend Thursday with Paul and Bilma and give our legs a break.

Los Dos Centavos de Ileana
It must have rained pretty hard last night because all dead animals on the side of the road were very moist! I almost ran over a couple of them and made the comment to Nolan how gross it would be to get splashed with dead animal matter. In a attempt to ease my concern he said, 'you have fenders on your bike, it would get stuck inside the fenders but you will not get splashed.'  Thank you Nolan, but that logical statement did not help much. Anyhow, I swear that not even 30 seconds later something landed on my rigth shoulder and I thought before I touch it, I'm going see what it is. I took 2 looks at it and my brain identified the foreign obeject as a moist and smashed earthworm!  Of course I screamed and added 'eww gross!'  (This worm was so smashed and moist that if there was a 'Gerber' version for baby birds, this would qualify for it!). So, what was Nolan's reaction to my scream, you may ask.  He asked me, 'are you ok?' And with horror in my voice I said 'a dead earthworm landed on my right shoulder!' He shook his head several times and continued riding. I, on the other hand, shook my sleeve several times until the earthworm fell off, leaving a gross wet spot on my jersey!

No pictures today!