My friend Angie is training to bike in the Tour De UP, which is a bike tour of the eastern UP around St. Ignace. Bikers participating in the tour typically will ride about 60 miles a day. She is training pretty hard for it, so when I called her up to bike the Norway city trail with me, she was more than up for it.
This is the map that is supplied by the city. As you can see (if it isn't too blurry to read), they list that the Strawberry Lake loop is approximately 1 mile around (it's actually 0.9miles according to my GPS), and the City Loop is approximately ___ miles. Well, that's not very helpful for someone who wants to know the distance they're setting out to do! That was our mission- to track the distance so when my long runs start getter longer, I could do this loop as an option.
We parked at Strawberry Lake and headed out from there. She has a really nice road bike that she bought recentally to make her long rides easier for her. I have a really nice mountain bike that I bought last year because...well, I didn't have a bike. She was a little nervous heading out on the bike trail since she didn't know the condition it was in, but I assured her it was good enough to rollerblade on, so surely her bike could handle it, and she quickly agreed. Besides, the map lists that the entire route is paved, so there won't be any problem.
Well, no. See, the map lists that the trail is paved "except for the lake street portion". Somehow I didn't see that.
But I'm jumping ahead in the story. I totally skipped the part where we got lost and doubled back for a portion. Let me illustrate.
(mapping courtesy of Cardio Trainer App on Motorola Droid)
See that part that is circled on the right? See how it doesn't match up with anything from the picture that the city provides? Yeah. That's because it's not part of the trail. Unfortunently, the trail is not marked AT ALL in this section, so if you don't have a map or knowledge of where the hell you are going, you are going to do what we did. And, bonus, on the part we doubled back on, there was a HUGE long drawn out hill that made me want to punch babies. We did get to see a doe and her fawn on this section, so I guess it wasn't a total loss.
Anyway. So, we figure out where the hell we are going, and start to head that direction. Well, then it turns to dirt. Rocky, non-road bike friendly dirt. Luckily that only lasted for about 0.25 of a mile or so. Then we were back on pavement for the rest of the trip!
Referring back to the first picture, the part on the left where the text is pointing to is a man made marsh that the bike trail winds through. It was very pretty and relaxing. We also saw a fox snake!
This wasn't the actual snake I saw, but is a good representation of it. They are so pretty. When I first saw one up here, I didn't think it was a native species because of how bright the yellow is- it looked tropical to me.
The marsh area has an option to continue through it, but it turns to dirt and is VERY rocky, so we didn't want to risk popping a tire on Angie's bike. Next time we will take her mountain bike!
Well, mission accomplished. We figured out how long the trail is (roughly 7 miles, it mapped as 7.48, but I figure we doubled back for around 0.5 mile). Plus, the marshy loop itself would be fun to run. In fact, I think I'll do that tomorrow for my run. Fun!
What did everyone else do today?
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