Today we woke up expect­ing some rain on our final day of the trip. We were pleas­antly sur­prised when we were greeted with clear, sunny skies instead! We hit the road between 8 and 9 am, headed for Beloit, Wisconsin and home. It was a gor­geous day, bright and sunny, on the warm side. Probably the nicest weather day we’d had the entire trip.

We awoke early to a bright, shiny day, grabbed a quick con­ti­nen­tal break­fast from the lobby of the Super 8, packed our bikes, and headed out of town. Destination? Shotgun Eddy White Water Rafting!

We rode back through Shawano past the Menominee Indian Casino before hook­ing a left onto a nice curvy, hilly, tree-lined coun­try road for about 10 miles before reach­ing a gravel entrance for Shotgun Eddy. On the way, I spot­ted an Bald Eagle fly­ing grace­fully above us.

We decided to do a quick stop at the Tahquamenon Falls State Park again; this time to check out the Lower Falls. The Lower Falls weren’t quite as breath­tak­ing, but still pretty cool. The Lower Falls empty into a large cir­cu­lar bowl before the water moves on down the river. I’d love to come back and actu­ally spend some time hik­ing in the area.

We stopped at a lit­tle rest stop just after the Mackinac Bridge to take some pic­tures and fig­ure out where we were going to go from there, since the day’s goal had been to get across the bridge. It was only 3 pm, so we had plenty of time. After talk­ing to the parks peo­ple man­ning the rest stop infor­ma­tion booth, one of whom rode motor­cy­cles him­self, and check­ing out some maps they’d given us, we decided to push on up to Whitefish Point, one of the Northernmost tips on the Eastern por­tion of the Upper Peninsula, and home to Whitefish Point Lighthouse and Shipwreck Museum.

Wednesday, June 16 — Today we woke up early, intend­ing to rent kayaks and kayak down the Crystal River, a low level, slow mov­ing river that runs through Glen Arbor and the sur­round­ing area. We headed back to Art’s for break­fast, where I had the Old Number 5, which con­sisted of corn beef hash, two eggs and wheat toast, for $5.95 and a glass of orange juice to top it off (I’m not a cof­fee drinker, no mat­ter how much I could use the caf­feine this morn­ing). I highly rec­om­mend it, it was a great breakfast.