Tour de Superior: Day 3 Houghton, MI to Munising, MI (RUSA 436)

Day three, from Houghton to Munising, was a 143 mile ride. While the mapping software suggested it was going to be close to 6,000 feet of climbing, it was only about 3,100 feet, so it ended up being much easier than expected. That's a good thing. For our third day of riding, we did well and felt great at the end, finishing at 5:00 PM after a 7:00 AM start.



The question for the day was how would Jerry's knee hold up. A day of rest with ice, coupled with a wrap did wonders. His knee held up fine and he felt great. Perhaps a bit too good. We had to tell him to scale it back a couple of times ... maybe for tomorrow we'll loosen the wrap a bit. :)


Here are Dave and Jerry after Marquette, shortly after the 100 mile mark. Today was a bit cooler, so we kept leg/arm warmers and jackets on pretty much the whole time. We got a little rain a couple of times, but every time Jerry put his rain jacket on the rain went away. I figured that out and only put mine on once for a little bit. Worked out pretty good.



Towards the end of the ride, about ten miles from Munising, we got our history lesson for the day. Lake Superior was named by the French simply that it was "above" (i.e. Superior) to Lake Huron. Imagine that.



The town before Munising is Christmas ... even though it was June there was Christmas stuff everywhere. We had to stop and partake. We then arrived in Munising ... 10 hours and 5 minutes. First order of business was of course Dairy Queen, which fortunately was on the route to the motel. Jerry was distracted by one of the antique cars we had seen on our ride yesterday and rode right past the DQ. We set him straight right away!

After getting settled in to the motel we went to dinner at Sydney's and were quite pleased with the dinner. Jerry and I had spagetti - much, much better than yesterday's. Some of the antique car group came in and sat by us, so we chatted a bit about our rides - did you know that the cars originally had their steering wheels on the right hand side, basically because that is where horse drawn wagons were driven from - the lead horse was on the right and the driver could crack the whip on the right without hitting an oncoming wagon? And Henry Ford is credited for moving the steering to the left so that ladies could get out on the boardwalk instead of in the middle of the muddy roads?

After dinner we were still hungry, so we went across the road to the grocery store - Jerry and Dave split a package of six Klondike bars. I restrained myself - only had a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt.

We're expecting tomorrow to be a relatively easy day - 130 miles and 2,300 feet of climbing.