Day 30: Perfect Strawberry Spot

Since more or less day one of this trip, my mom and I (and now just I) have been looking for a roadside farm stand with fresh strawberries. We saw a couple in upstate New York, but the timing was wrong and we thought they’d be more abundant. We were wrong. Today, I finally found the perfect stop. Fresh strawberries at a great roadside stand with picnic tables to enjoy them at and even an old pickup truck for decor. 🍓🍓🍓

Michigan has Hills!

I slept so well last night. I think the sound of Lake Michigan’s waves sounded like home, which helped. I had a slow-ish morning and left the campground at around nine. I had scoped out coffee options in the next town and found a great little cafe there (I haven’t seen a cafe in days). A friendly couple was sitting outside when I rolled up and we chatted a bit. They were impressed by the cross country tour, but they’ve done iron mans, which I find even more impressive (running a marathon after biking a century?!? 😰). I got a latte and a blueberry crumble bar and enjoyed watching the world go by for a bit.

After leaving Onekama, I hit my first hill of the day. MI has been pretty flat to date - some occasionally gently rolling terrain, but not hilly. It turns out my legs do remember how hills work, and it was kind of a nice change of pace to be biking up and down instead of just forward.

The scenery today was really pretty. Lots of forests, with an occasional farm, and the view would often open up onto Lake Michigan, or a smaller inland lake. I even had a tailwind part of the day!

After entering Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, I stopped in at the visitors center where I stocked up on post cards and got an annual parks pass. I’ll be going through at least three more National Park Service lands that I know about and maybe some more that I don’t. It’s good until next June if anyone wants to go check out a park with me after this trip.

The lakeshore has a really nice bike path spanning the main section. I took it from the visitor center to the campground (the map sent me more directly by road, but I chose to ignore that). I went through beautiful woods, by giant dunes, and it was super well maintained and quiet. Quite idyllic.

Tomorrow is a shorter biking day. I plan to go on a hike here in the morning to check out the dunes more before I head back out on the road.