Monday, September 15, 2008

 

Lake Michigan Bike Trip - Day 14


Green Bay, WI to Sturgeon Bay, WI 64.02 miles



























I picked up the Fox River Path after crossing the river in from Green Bay to De Pere. This is another over-under loop similar to that traveled in Traverse City. The only difference here is that it is a toll-bike way. Go figure. I wonder if they have path Nazis stationed to collect fees on the weekends or more hospitable days than today. Perhaps they knock people off of their bikes if they don't pay - sort of like that cop in New York City. Anyway, they have "pay here" booths along the way.




However, the path does offer a safe route through the towns to avoid the insane drivers.








The path ends, but it is possible to continue on the brick walkway, although it does switch to sidewalks and asphalt at points. The advantage is that it passed under some busy streets and thus compensates for the slow going. On a busy day, this may not be a good choice though.






Out of town, the route continues on a marked bike route past the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay.


My biggest planning triumph was finding a safe route along the northwest shoreline into Door County. This route through the Bayshore County Park fit the bill, overcoming one of the disruptions to routes (and the roads on many maps) as I soon found out.



















Once past the park the route went inland a bit through a rural setting.



















As I hinted at earlier, the construction of a new Route 57 is wreaking havoc with roads. My route no longer crossed the highway, so a little improvisation was required - through one opening in a fence, across the new highway still under construction, through another gap in a fence, then across the existing highway. The last shot is looking south over what should have been a straight shot of roadway according to my maps. This description is for historic purposes, since it is likely never to be repeated.



















After that quasi detour it was back to the zig-zag of east and north roads that led me to hill top churches and lake shore piers.











A ride through Potawatomi State Park posed a couple of unexpected crushed limestone bike paths that were supposed to be paved roads, but it made no difference to me - they were short - about a quarter mile for the first and only a hundred feet or so for the other.











Karen and I have been here before, so the setting was familiar and enjoyable.



















Heading to what I thought was the motel for the evening turned out to be the wrong location. The route, though, took me along a marked snowmobile route - oh well, that's pretty much the same, I guess.


Karen came to my rescue by driving to my location so I could plan a new safe route just a quarter mile away, but through a maze of busy highways - one being that pesky Route 57 again. Upon arriving at the correct motel, Karen greeted me with with camera in hand to capture my bewildered gaze. On top of the plethora of minor course corrections, a fierce headwind and chilly temperatures in the 40s made this ride a bit of a challenge. The only bright spot was that I overestimated the length of this day's leg by 25% because of the bike path shortcut that I took (but my GPS unit couldn't follow and thus calculated an extremely long detour).

Comments:

Post a Comment





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?