routes

I have some favorite routes that I ride, most start from home in Harbor Springs, Mich. My daily ride during the workweek, if there's not enough time for more, is from home to the Petoskey waterfront and back, about 20 miles. That will probably get stretched a bit now that the new segment of trail is open from Petoskey to East Park. Just a bit farther and very beautiful.

My longer rides usually involve riding on the Little Traverse Wheelway, ending up in Charlevoix and and back home (60 miles), or further to Ironton, cross on the ferry, then on to Boyne City, and then retrace the route back home (96 miles), and of course I like to ride another four miles to make it a "century".

Once or twice every summer, we load the bikes in our truck, drive to Mackinaw City, unload the bikes and take the ferry to Mackinac Island. No cars, but lots of walkers, bikes, and horse-pulled wagons (I would suggest fenders!). My wife usually rides six or seven laps with me, and walks a lap (8 miles per lap). My record on the island for one day (August '04) is 15 laps (plus a bit extra) for a total of 124 miles, but I'm usually good for 12 to 14 laps. It's always fun seeing people's reactions when they see me cruise by over and over. On a typical day there, I am usually off the bike only for pit stops, and to eat.

For vacation fun, we have driven to Hart, Mich. to ride the Hart-Montague trail, but our favorite vacation rides are from Xenia, Ohio. Xenia was a railway hub, but now it's a bike trails hub (rails to trails). We have vacationed there every summer for several years. We drive there, and then we eat, ride, and sleep, eat, ride, and sleep, - well, you get the idea. There are five trails leading out of Xenia, and we can connect to other trails from those. Once we get to Xenia, we usually have 6 to 7 riding days. Once we arrive, I often ride the bike more miles than we drove the truck from home (490 miles)! Our '06 vacation in Xenia, I rode 577 miles in just 6.5 days we had for riding. Of those, four consecutive days were over 100 miles each, my record so far. I just love riding!

Please see the maps page, where I hope to show some maps of our regular bike riding routes, and also some links to info about the trails.