Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: An Idea is Born
Author’s note: I’m going on a week-long motorcycle trip in June around Lake Michigan with friends and I’m going to document the preparations leading up to the trip, as well as post daily entries from the road as the trip happens! You can join me by following along.
Preliminary Lake Michigan Circle Tour Route Map
I’ve only been riding a motorcycle for a little over two years. As I’ve gotten more comfortable on my bike, my subconscious has been nagging me to take longer and longer rides. Last year, I got together with a few friends and we did a day-long ride to Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. That just served to whet our appetites.
Skipping over winter, in February we attended the Cycle World motorcycle show at the Rosemont Convention Center in Des Plaines, Illinois. This show always gets me geared up and anxious to get back on my motorcycle! While roaming the aisles of new bikes, gear and accessories, my buddy Mike and I started talking about doing a longer trip this year.
A few days and a few phone conversations later, Mike proposed the idea of doing a week long circle tour of Lake Michigan in early to mid June. To say I got a little excited would be an understatement.
The more I thought about it, the more this seemed like the perfect first-time long range motorcycle trip. While we’d cover a lot of miles, we’d never be more than a day’s drive from home base in case something went wrong. We’d also be covering new ground the entire trip and ending up back home in one big loop, as opposed to a “there and back” straight line sort of trip.
We’re still in the early planning stages right now, but we’ve agreed on some basics. First, the trip will take place the second full week of June, the 14th through the 18th. The weather should be moderate enough for some great riding during June.
The second thing we’ve agreed on is to stick to county highways, local roads and scenic routes. Riding highways just isn't as fun. They’re straight and not as scenic. While we’re still working out our final route, the preliminary version promises lots of curvy, meandering roadway running right up against the eastern shore of Lake Michigan on the Michigan portion of the trip.
The third thing we agreed on was that we’ll be staying in motels/hotels. Initially I proposed that we camp instead. This would save a lot of money, but it meant that we’d also have to carry more gear (tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear, food), be a little more limited in where we could stay, and would be a lot less comfortable. Hey, I'm 42 and I've got a bad knee, comfort matters to an old man! Ultimately, we decided in favor of hotels. With four to six of us, we figure we’ll cut costs by splitting the hotel bill. We’ll also have comfortable beds, showers and bathrooms. Always a good thing!
In my next post I’ll talk about the motorcycle I’m planning on riding for this 1,000+ mile week-long trip. Hint: It’s not a touring bike. I hope you'll tag along for the ride!
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Just read your blog and its sounds like you had a great trip. My boyfriend and i are getting ready to the same thing this weekend, leaving on Saturday. Do you have any great routes we can follow, like you we hate the highways, prefer more scenic routes.
Thanks!
Patti
Patti, thanks for reading! It was a great trip, can’t wait for the next one!
Since we used GPS on a lot of the trip, I can’t give you the exact route we took for the entire trip. I can suggest some roads though. In Illinois, we followed the old Lincoln Highway which is still preserved on a variety of county and state highways. You can search eJourna for a few other stories we’ve written about the Lincoln Highway. In Indiana, we took Highway 12, aka the Dunes Highway.
Going up Michigan, we stuck very close to Lake Michigan, following the Red Arrow Highway to State Highway 63 near Benton Harbor; then on to the Blue Star Highway. once you reach Holland, you can cut over to State Highway 31. Around Manistee Township we cut over to Highway 22. At Glen Arbor area we took a shortcut on Highway 72, but if you’ve got the time I’d stay on 22 all the way to Traverse City and then on to 31. Stay on 31 until the Bay Harbor area then take 119 the rest of the way up, which will run into the Tunnel of Trees. Tunnel of Trees is a fun ride.
Once you reach the Upper Peninsula, road choices are more limited. Unless you plan on going way north, I’d stay to the south along Highway 2. That’ll take you to Highway 35/41, which you can take through the Green Bay area.
The Wisconsin portion of our trip wasn’t as exciting, so I can’t be of much help there. The roads we took were dictated more by things we wanted to do on the way and where we needed to be at the bottom of Wisconsin. I hear Door County is beautiful, so if you can spare the time, I’d head northeast from Green Bay and go out that way and then down the shoreline to Milwaukee.
I hope you have a great trip! Please come back and let us know how it went!