Spring 1997 - Cincinnati to Yukon
Journals - 13 May 1997
Day 43 - Crystal Falls, MI
13 May 1997 (cloudy/brief sun/brief showers; mileage = 86.1) -- A - We got
up after 7 and it wasn't raining! I went to the restroom and Robin came in
shortly thereafter to dry their sleeping bags. We talked for close to an
hour. It was nice to hear she'd had some of the same ups and downs I had.
Their longest day so far had been 75 miles and this was the 2nd earliest
day they'd gotten up. I was beginning to see they wouldn't make it to
Crystal Falls in one day. They wanted to stop at Kmart and even though we
wanted to stop at a grocery, they didn't seem to want to go together today.
We gave them the address and also Dennis' address and our voice mail and
they gave us their address. (They plan to return to the same place they had
been renting.) They seem very nice. Maybe not as well prepared as we are,
but that may be from a lack of good sources for supplies as well as a lack
of funds. Hard to say. They seemed happy with their setup, though, and
hopefully seeing our apparent overabundance of good stuff encouraged them
that they could improve upon their scheme and not that they had inferior
stuff. Or maybe they would think their setup to be fine and ours to be
overkill. Who knows? To us, it said we'd done about as well as we could
have done. I like the tandem/trailer idea -- their rig looked very cute --
I really would like to seem them on it in action, but there are times when
it just wouldn't have cut it for us. It would be fun to try it out, though.
We packed up and left in search of a grocery. Escanaba was a pretty big
place with a Kmart, Wal-mart, at least two 24-hour stores and lots of cars.
I got groceries while Chris fixed my front brakes and L.W.'d the chains. He
usually gets an interested old man talking to him and this time was no
exception. We got the groceries put away and took off again. We were
beginning to see it would be a long day if we went to Crystal Falls. It was
threatening to rain at any given time. We stopped and added rain gear and
took off rain gear at verious intervals. We found a deli that had pasties
fresh out of the oven. We had one at $2.25 and it was very tasty! I wanted
more, but we decided to eat some of our cargo instead. Later on, we went
through a town called Vulcan and Chris realized he was well prepared in his
lobster claws (*Picture-lobster claw), so he gave the live long and
prosper' wave to everyone he saw. I don't think anyone got it. Then we
arrived in Norway (these are iron mine towns) and just before we left the
town, there was a spring on the side of the road with a little park. We
stopped to rest -- we were both pretty wiped out and it had been getting
hilly on us also! As it turned out, lots of people stopped to fill up
bottles of spring water. We filled our 1 empty one, but that was really
neat. It just overflowed down the hill and into a storm grate. That seems
very wasteful. Back to the hilly riding. We got to Wisconsin for a few
miles and then back to Michigan. Somehow, even when it seemed we were going
down hills, we were still having to work hard. Weird. We had decided at
this point that we would plod on to the Nelson's and take the next day off.
The sky was actually clear ahead and we got to see the sunset and arrived
in VERY hilly Crystal Falls at darkfall. Oh! We had crossed into the
Central Time Zone at 12:45 or so (reset to 11:45). We encountered some
difficulty finding their house, but finally did so and got to bed just
before 10 (new time). Hoping for a sunny day to do laundry and get rested
up!
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