Today I woke up at 4:15 in order to get to the ferry terminal on time, as I had a 6 AM ticket. Unfortunately it was dark and raining, so I put on my foul weather gear, added my headlamp, turned on my taillight and left my brothers house right at 5. Fortunately, just as I was about to leave, the rain slowed to a drizzle, so I didn’t get wet. You are supposed to be at least 15 minutes early in case the TSA decides to do some spot checks. I arrived about 25 minutes early and by the time I found way aboard and stripped off my foul weather gear, the boat was already moving.

Something like two and a half hours later, we arrived at Muskegon, Michigan, in the eastern time zone.

I found some nice rail-trails that lead east, as I intend on leaving Michigan somewhere in the southeastern part of the state so that I can reconnect with the ABA northern tier trail near Toledo, Ohio.

The trails ended in the northwestern part of Grand Rapids. Several people along the way warned me of coming severe thunderstorms that were projected to arrive this evening. One man was pretty concerned for me.

I decided to heed these suggestions and see if I could find a room on the eastern or southeastern side of town. I found a bench in the corner of nicely landscaped commercial property and started searching. There were plenty of flowers around me and one of those sitting bronze statues on another nearby bench. It was a quite beautiful spot.

Without too much trouble, I found a room near the airport on the other side of town. Proceeding to mount my bike and move on, I rode straight into one of those beautiful flower beds, crushing a few flowers and making it a bit less beautiful. It was a long hot day, and I realized that I was getting tired and it was a good time to quit.

I try really hard to pay attention to clues of fatigue like this and either take a big break or if I’m near a stopping point, quit for the day.

I had to ride completely through Grand Rapids to get to the motel. I was surprised at how large and developed that Grand Rapids is. I had completely forgotten that Michigan State University was located here. When you cycle through a city, you really get a sense of the place, warts and all. There are not a lot of warts in Grand Rapids, but there are some homeless wandering about.

It was six miles to the ferry in the morning and another 53 from the dock in Muskegon to the motel room. About 29 of those 53 miles were on well paved rail-trails. This makes a total of 2548 miles traveled. I think that it is significant that I think that there may be less than 1000 miles left to travel!