Update from Rhinelander, WI

Woke up to the sun shining into my tent and my shoulders freezing as I tried crawling out of my sleeping bag. Brrr… it was a cold morning. My first reaction was to crawl back in and sleep for two more hours, especially as I’d had trouble falling asleep the previous night, but I forced myself to get up so I could get an early start.

I ate a banana and some strawberries as I broke down camp. There was no dew on the tent this time, but the ground tarp was coated in mud. *sigh*

I was out of there and on the road at 8:30AM. I’ve been feeling a lot better over the past couple of days, except that I still feel sick when I wake up and stay that way until lunchtime. :|

Anyway, the plan for today was to just keep going for as long as I could. I knew I couldn’t realistically make Minneapolis tonight as it was almost 400+ miles away. I would mostly be on Hwy 2 and Hwy 8 today. Hwy 2 going west had quite a bit of construction going on with more than two miles of grooved pavement (no “motorcycles use extreme caution” warning) and a detour for a few miles.

I made it to Manistique by 10:00AM. It turned out to be a no-name town with nothing much to see. I had breakfast at a Burger King with a couple of Harley riders from Chicago who were doing the loop around Lake Michigan.

90 more miles and I was in Norway, MI where I stopped for lunch. There was a slight misunderstanding with the server and I ended up getting a plateful of deep fried fish. Yuk.

When I walked out of the deli, I saw two bikes parked next to mine and the riders standing next to them. I was amazed to see that one of the bikes was an exact replica of mine except much newer. In the past 3 years of owning my bike I have never seen another curvy red naked SV, so I was pretty delighted to see another one. Co-incidentally, the other bike was a V-star 250 – my first bike was a Virago 250 which was an earlier version of this bike. We chatted for a little while before exchanging contact info and then I was on my way again.

The ride along Hwy 8 was long and monotonous. I made it as far as Rhinelander, a town I decided to stop at purely because I liked the name. :P I searched for a coffee shop and found a really nice one. Yay! I thought I’d stop and get a coffee and rest before I rode another 50-60 miles. But when I got online, I saw that they predicted thunderstorms all along that way. I had no desire to get caught out in one just to make time, so I decided to get a motel for the night and ride the 200 something miles to Minneapolis the next day.

I got a room at the Best Western, relieved to be able to shower after two days of camping. Later in the evening, I walked out to explore the downtown which took almost five minutes. Apparently folks here retire early.

I probably should do that too. I am in a different time zone now, so even though it says 10:30PM, my body thinks it is 11:30. *yawn*