Trails and Tribulations

On Monday, we drove and hour and a half up north through Door County and arrived at Gills Rock in time to catch the 10 AM Ferry.  Our bikes waited patiently by the fence while Don and Roy purchased our ferry tickets.  Round trip tickets were $13 per person, plus an additional $4.00 per bike.

Another couple agreed to take a picture of the 4 of us together.  We're standing on the top deck of the ferry, with the harbor behind us.  You can tell Char is acclimated to the cooler climate of Wisconsin while I have donned my windproof jacket for the trip across the channel.  I hope I'm prepared for our trip across Death's Door Passage, which is only 6 miles wide and has turbulent currents at all times!

On the way over, Char and Roy check the map of Washington Island and discuss where we are going to bike to first.  There are some bike trails, while at other times we'll have to ride on the roads.

Yeah!  Just ahead is the dock in Detroit Harbor!

First stop for me: Take a picture of the prominent Washington Island sign.

We're off!    Well, almost we're off.....looks like we need to get a bit more organized before we head down Lobdell Point Road.

Another quick stop while Char checks the map to confirm that we're headed in the right direction.

Oh, no!  We started up after stopping and then noticed about two blocks down that Don wasn't with us. Good grief!  He had another flat tire!  He and Roy had worked on the bikes Sunday afternoon and had just put a new tube in his back tire.  That is the second flat tire on his back wheel since Saturday!  Out came the tools from the backpack.  Fortunately, we carried a spare tube and compressed air containers. At least we found a nice, shady spot for them to work in.

This cute "cat-fish" was sitting in a front yard along one of the roads.  Definitely too cute for me not to stop and take a picture of!

Roy is pushing his bike up the sandy hill towards Sand Dunes Beach.  That was tough.

Lunch time.  Don didn't want to turn around and is wearing his sun glasses on the back of his head.  I decided to make a funny face and Roy is the only serious one in the bunch.  We all were hungry at that point.

After lunch we were headed to Norwegian Stavekirke (Stave Church) when we came across the historic Island Dairy building built here in 1916.  We stopped and looked around and that is when Don noticed that his back tire was going flat again!  Roy had pulled out a small steel piece of shrapnel out of the tire when we stopped the first time, but there must have been something else that was missed.  

So, we went to Plan B.  Actually, we only had Plan A until this point, but it was clear that we weren't going to make it to the church and then back to the harbor.  It would have been no problem for Roy, Char and me, but Don would have wound up walking a long, long way.  We made another stop for water and to add more of the compressed air to Don's tire that was getting lower each mile that he rode.

We were almost back to our starting point and I stopped to get a picture of the huge Norwegian Coffee Pot sign.  My aunt Eleanor had given me an enamel coffee pot years ago with this type of design on it and I still have it in my kitchen cupboard.  It doesn't go with the southwestern decor in my house, but it holds too many dear memories for me to get rid of it.

As we turned the corner and were almost back to the harbor, this sign caught my eye.  Was someone trying to tell us something?  Was this a not-so-subtle hint?  Who knew about all of our bike issues?

End of the day:  second flat tire on the bike and 4 sets of tired legs.  Even after all of that, we still managed to bike 12 miles.