Author Topic: Michigan Bicycle Route 20 from Ludington to Marine City  (Read 4001 times)

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Offline compacted_graphite

Michigan Bicycle Route 20 from Ludington to Marine City
« on: October 11, 2014, 11:51:47 am »
A group of five cyclists have just completed a bicycle tour across lower Michigan using parts of US Bicycling Route 20, starting in Ludington Michigan from Sunday October 5 thru Thursday October 9, 2014. We did deviate from the trail in order to access camping opportunities along the route. We did some route planning using Google Maps with the Bicycling option activated, which may have enabled us to follow the USBR 20 route more closely. Day 1 from Ludington to Baldwin found the route having good pavement and little traffic. We had a great lunch at the Na-Tah-Ka Restaurant, and we left the trail at M37 in order to camp in Baldwin. On day 2, we followed the Pere Marquette Rail Trail from Baldwin to Lake Station, and the first part of the trail was rough (recent tractor treads) and not paved to Reed City. The trail was paved for the rest of the day to Lake Station. We then traveled south from Lake Station in order to camp near Weidman at an excellent campground called Gammy Woods.  We got caught in an October thunderstorm on the way to Lake Station, which chilled us, but we were able to mostly dry out for the next day. Day three found us working our way back to the Pere Marquette Rail Trail and having lunch at the Railside Restaurant in Sanford. Wheeler Road is a bit rough with little shoulder and a lot of traffic on the way to Bay City. Our destination was the nice campground at Bay City State Recreation Area. We followed the USBR 20 route thru Bay City on Day 4 which included a section on scenic elevated platforms above the Saginaw River. We followed the USBR 20 until we deviated westbound to camp north of Vassar. After some of the largest pancakes we have ever seen at Lizzies All American Diner south of Caro, we headed for Lakeport State Park on Day 5. One of the nicest roads on our trip, which was not part of USBR 20, was a stretch from Mayville to south of Marlette on Clifford Road - beautiful pavement, no traffic, bright sun, and a 20 mph tail wind. We had lunch at Harrington's Family Restaurant in Brown City, and continued to enjoy great tailwinds to Lakeport State Park, a nice campground north of Port Huron. We had a celebratory dinner at Duffy's Irish Tavern near the park. We were somewhat surprised at the large amount of campers (all RVs) using the State Park Campgrounds this year based on our experience from the last two years of bike camping tours, where we found State Park Campgrounds relatively empty. Temps were highs of 50's and lows of 35-40 degrees.