Wednesday, June 16, 2010 — 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.

The weather was cold and over­cast, with light misty rain, so we made the exec­u­tive deci­sion to pass on kayak­ing in the cold and instead head back to our rooms, pack our stuff up and jump back on the bikes.

My rid­ing boots, leather jacket and the clothes I’d worn yes­ter­day were still pretty wet, so I threw them in the garbage bag I’d brought along and stuffed them in my extra duf­fel bag. I brought along a pair of Vibram Vasque hik­ing shoes that have good soles on them, so I chose to wear those instead. I also threw on a nice warm Indian Motorcycle hooded sweat­shirt and then wisely chose to go with the rain gear. Good thing too, because we ended up rid­ing through a light rain, and then on some wet roads. The rain gear kept me dry and also kept the cold wind out, so I was warm enough even with­out my leather jacket.

We had a few things we wanted to accom­plish today, includ­ing rid­ing the famous Tunnel of Trees, a windy, twisty stretch of 30 mile road that’s mostly cov­ered by foliage, cre­at­ing a nice tun­nel; and reach­ing the Mackinac Bridge as well. We fig­ured if we crossed the bridge, we could stop for the evening some­where on the Upper Peninsula and call it a day. We ended up over­achiev­ing with an awe­some day of rid­ing and fun.

Like I said, our first hour of rid­ing was wet, but then the misty rain stopped and the sun even peeked through the clouds now and again. We crossed through the coun­try­side towards Traverse City (the place we’d been intend­ing to stay overnight on Tuesday), which turned out to be a fairly large city. We made a pit stop at a Yamaha ORV deal­er­ship where I picked up a warmer set of leather gloves to replace my still-wet ones.

After Traverse City, we stuck to Route 31, fol­low­ing it along the shore­line of the East Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay towards Elk Rapids and then on along the Western edge of Torch Lake. We passed through Charlevoix and skirted the bot­tom edge of Little Traverse Bay on our way to Harbor Springs and the start of the Tunnel of Trees.

Around noon we hit the Tunnel of Trees, a por­tion of State Highway 119 that stretches along the Northeast edge of Lake Michigan from the top of Little Traverse Bay to Cross Village which sits on the Southern edge of Sturgeon Bay.

Wow, what a ride! The nar­row road has no cen­ter line for most of its length, and fol­lows a series of enter­tain­ing curves and switch­backs along the lake shore, dodg­ing in and out of a dense tree canopy and plenty of vaca­tion homes. The ride was gor­geous and mod­er­ately chal­leng­ing, but def­i­nitely a lot of fun on two wheels! We did have one scare when a doe and her two year­lings darted in front of us. The mother made it across the road and the two year­lings wisely u-turned back into the high grass, spar­ing both us and them­selves any grief.

The Tunnel of Trees took maybe 45 min­utes to ride through before deposit­ing us in Cross Village Township. A co-worker had rec­om­mended a place to eat called Legs Inn, which just hap­pened to be in Cross Village. We almost passed it by until I spot­ted the sign and pulled over.

Legs Inn is an inter­est­ing place! They serve tra­di­tional Polish food, but the 80-plus year-old Inn, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, has some inter­est­ing archi­tec­ture! The out­side is formed from field stone and the inside is full of nat­ural wood and looks more like a back­woods lodge than an inn. It has a nice over­look of Lake Michigan out back as well. Their web­site prob­a­bly best describes it:

A blend of Old World European and Indian cul­tures cre­ates a mem­o­rable atmos­phere. The entry foyer, tav­ern, game and din­ing rooms are all filled with an intrigu­ing col­lec­tion of nature and hand carved fur­ni­ture — whim­si­cal cre­ations made of tree stumps, twisted limbs and roots, drift­wood sculp­tures and mas­sive field­stone fireplaces.

In keep­ing with my resolve to eat local, I decided to order the Polish Hearty Lunch for $10.49 on the rec­om­men­da­tion of our wait­ress, who seemed to know what she was talk­ing about. The Lunch con­sisted of a com­bi­na­tion of a Golabki (a cab­bage roll filled with ham and rice) and three Pierogi, one each stuffed with beef and pork, farmer’s cheese, and sauer­kraut and mush­rooms. I have to admit, the thought of cooked cab­bage any­thing didn’t exactly thrill me, but oh my god was it good! I think I liked the Golabki more than the Pierogi.

Mike, who ordered Pierogi as well, and I also decided to try an Old Fashioned Polish Berry Szarlotka, which is an “Old World Polish crum­ble cake baked with a blend of fresh apples, rasp­ber­ries, straw­ber­ries, black­ber­ries and blue­ber­ries.” When the plate arrived, the thing was at least eight inches tall, topped with ice cream, and whipped cream on top of that! It was huge! There’s no way we were going to be able to fin­ish it!

Of course we ate every ounce of it.

Dean had the almost as deli­cious look­ing Carrot Cake, which had “lay­ers of moist cake loaded with car­rots, wal­nuts and pineap­ple. Topped with cream cheese and a roasted almond icing.”

Heaven on a plate!

Stuffed to the gills, we decided to press on. The sun that had peeked through the clouds here and there while rid­ing the Tunnel of Trees had once again dis­ap­peared behind a heavy rolling cloud bank. We really didn’t want to make the Mackinac Bridge cross­ing in rain, so we headed out North Lakeshore Drive, which took us through the Southwest edge of Wilderness State Park, and then on to 31, aka Mackinaw Highway, and finally Interstate 75.

The night before we’d read up a lit­tle on the Mackinac Bridge and watched some YouTube videos of other bik­ers cross­ing it. One tipped us to the fact that the cen­ter lanes going each direc­tion are made of an open metal grat­ing like you’d see cov­er­ing open­ings on side­walks in major cities. The cool thing is that if you look down while rid­ing a motor­cy­cle over the grat­ing, you can see the water under the bridge!

Mackinac Bridge is five miles long. It’s the third longest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world, and it con­nects lower Michigan with the Upper Peninsula and serves as the divid­ing line between Lake Michigan to the West and Lake Huron to the East.

Crossing this bridge in any vehi­cle is cool. Crossing it on a motor­cy­cle is much cooler. Riding on the cen­ter lanes while sneak­ing glances down past your knees at the water below the grat­ing is even cooler! It’s also very unnerv­ing, since the grat­ing forces your motor­cy­cle to fol­low a very unset­tling, undu­lat­ing pat­tern that makes you feel like you’re going to lose con­trol at any sec­ond. Add to that the fact that the metal grate had a nice green patina to it that made it look like it was slick and cov­ered in moss and you can see that it’s not for the faint of heart. So much so that they actu­ally have peo­ple who will ride your motor­cy­cle across the bridge for you!

Of course we just blazed right across. Only the one mile cen­ter sec­tion of the bridge is cov­ered with the grat­ing, so we rode in the out­side lane to get a good luck at Lake Huron before cross­ing onto the metal grat­ing and star­ing down into the deep green lake waters below us. I admit, rid­ing on the grat­ing did make me ner­vous, but it was a pretty cool view and a once-in-a-lifetime expe­ri­ence I wasn’t about to pass up!

Mackinac Bridge is a toll bridge. You pay when you reach the Upper Peninsula side. It costs $1.75 per axle for motor­cy­cles, cars, vans, SUVs, etc. So we had to pay $3.50 for each motor­cy­cle. Well worth the money for the view and the experience.

(More of Day Three in the next post!)

Related posts:

1. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: Day Two
2. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: The Night Before
3. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: Day Six
4. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: Day Five
5. Lake Michigan Circle Tour by Motorcycle: The Luggage Problem