17th new state on the BMW motorcycle

We're counting down the 19 states we need to complete our goal of riding our BMW motorcycle in each of the lower 48 states. Today we left Gladstone, MI later than usual, waiting for thunderstorms to pass.

We followed U.S. Route 2 the entire way to Grand Rapids, MN, crossing back and forth into Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula along the way to Minnesota, our 17th new state.

We thought riding through the farmland in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and southern Wisconsin was monotonous, and today we decided that riding through the forests in the U.P. is just as monotonous. It was fun, however, to spot some unique signs, such as the large cut-out of a miner advertising the Iron Mountain Iron Mine and the Viking ship announcing we were in the town of Norway, MI which was actually named for the Norway pines in the area, not the country.

Around Iron Mountain the landscape changes from flat to rolling, steep hills and in fact there is a ski area here plus due to the snow, forests, and trail systems snowmobiling is also really popular. This area typically gets over 16' of snow each winter!

We stopped for lunch in the tiny town of Marenisco, MI, population 254 in 2010, where we might have been the only people to eat lunch the entire day.

Yesterday we stayed on Lake Michigan, and today we rode past the southern shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin.

Lake Superior is not only the largest of the Great Lakes, it's also the largest body of fresh water on earth.

A detour on U.S. Route 2 took us onto a county road in Wisconsin, winding its way through the only farmland we saw all day; the rest of today's ride featured forests.

The sun briefly came out for a few minutes mid-day, and then the rain started when we had about 60 miles left in today's 375 mile ride. Mike and I both miss the bright sunshine of Arizona, and we've calculated that the last truly sunny day on this trip was 2 weeks ago in North Carolina. We avoided the heavy rains on the East Coast, and it seems our luck has run out in the Midwest since the forecast at least for tomorrow morning is also for rain as we continue west into North Dakota.  Here is today's route

Riding the BMW along Lake Michigan in the UP

We've been looking forward to riding the BMW along the western shore of Lake Michigan since we started planning our cross-country motorcycle trip. I grew up in northwestern Indiana and loved spending summer days at the sandy beach on the southern tip of Lake Michigan. We spent several vacations in Michigan when our boys were young, and a highlight was always climbing up and then sliding down the tall and incredibly steep Sleeping Bear Dunes.

We started out today from Beaver Dam, WI shortly after 8 am and were hopeful that we'd be treated to a sunny day. The skies quickly clouded over and we had to settle for intermittent sunshine as we rode northeast.

We could tell we were close to Green Bay, home of the Packers NFL team, when we saw a tanker truck with a football-shaped "Title Town" logo, a reference to the Packers, on the back.

The border between Wisconsin and Michigan is the Menominee River, named after the Menominee Indians of Wisconsin. We did a little dance on the motorcycle as we crossed into Michigan, our 16th new state on this trip.

Water was definitely a theme for today's ride, as we crossed several creeks and streams, and rode past numerous small lakes on our way to Lake Michigan, the only one of the 5 great lakes that is completely within the United States' borders. The third largest of the Great Lakes, the name Michigan comes from the Ojibwa word 'michi gami' for 'large lake'.

The overcast sky was almost the same color as the lake's water, and sometimes it was difficult to tell where the horizon ended and the lake started. We followed Michigan Route 35 along the coast, catching glimpses of the lake through the trees.

We rode through Escanaba, currently a city of about 12,000 and historically the name of an Ojibwa village in this area and stopped at the Sand Point Lighthouse, built in 1867 and operational until 1939.

Mike found a beautiful hotel right on Little Bay de Noc that opens into Lake Michigan's Green Bay. The Terrace Bay Hotel also has a wonderful restaurant, the Freshwater Tavern where we enjoyed dinner while looking out the large windows onto the bay.

We often eat in chain restaurants because we prefer to walk to dinner after being on the motorcycle all day, and that doesn't leave us many options. Not only were the lake perch, panko crusted chicken, homemade bread and fresh salads delicious; we also enjoyed a walk along the hotel's boardwalk down to the beach after we ate.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula, or UP, contains 29% of the land in Michigan and only 3% of the population. Locals are known as Yoopers, derived from "UP-ers" and we saw several businesses with the word 'Yooper' as part of their name. We're looking forward to riding west tomorrow through the UP into Minnesota where we should be able see Lake Superior on the way to reaching the 17th new state of our cross-country trip.  Here is today's route

Walls of corn and another new state

We had a wonderful visit with my stepmom Val in Indiana, and set out this morning for Wisconsin, our 15th new state.

Thunderstorms rolled through Valpo around 5 am, and there was a heavy mist with chance of rain when we left a little after 8 am so we suited up in our rain gear. It never truly rained, and we rode through the mist for about an hour.

Instead of taking the direct route north through the traffic of the Chicago area, we opted to sweep around the southwestern edge of the Chicago metropolitan area and instead enjoyed riding through the Indiana and Illinois countryside.

We crossed the Kankakee River, that used to be part of a huge wetland area before it was drained in the mid-1800's to create more land suitable for farming. In fact, the name Kankakee is believed to come from a Miami-Illinois word that describes a marsh.

This part of the Midwest is flat as far as we could see, and Mike said that riding on the 2-lane roads felt like we were riding between walls of corn. Periodically we would see a barn or grain elevator, but otherwise it was fields of corn and soybeans, soybeans and corn.

Today we exceeded the 6000 mile mark for this trip. Mike purchased the bike the end of March this year, and we're hoovering up the miles as we cross the country.

We crossed into Wisconsin, our 15th new state in the early afternoon. The skies finally cleared up, the sun started shining, and the countryside changed from straight roads through flat fields to winding, curving roads through forested hills.

We're in Beaver Dam, WI for the evening. Beaver Dam was settled in 1841 and currently is home to about 16,000 people. A WW II POW camp for 300 German prisoners of war was located not far from our hotel, and there is a 6000 acre lake and several parks. Tomorrow we continue north into Michigan's Upper Peninsula to check off another state and are looking forward to riding along the western shore of Lake Michigan.  Here is the route from Ohio through today