===

Bottom Line

—

​

The bottom line is the UP is just great riding no matter which way you cut it.

Mile Marker – Day 1

—

So at the very end of August, we took off on a trip.

It was a four day trip to the UP. ~Um, ~so maybe we’ll just break it down day by day. ~Um, ~and kind of give you the, give everybody the lowdown. So we went from Iowa to Escanaba, Michigan, which is just before it kind of flattens out at the top of the Lake Michigan. So early morning leave 151 to Wisconsin, which is kind of a nice diagonal road four lane,~ um,~ across Iowa to mineral point because, uh, Brad had been to this pointer cafe a number of times.

So she pulls in the parking lot. No way. Within one minute. Wow. It was the craziest thing, so that was kind of fun, so. It was just one of those times you were taking the picture for her I was taking the picture for her. Yeah, I took a picture a selfie with me and I sent it to her Assuming that you know, who knows where she was when she would see it and she pulls in like right then So it was just one of those things.

So we jumped on the interstate Kind of gave us the fast lane through on the north side of green bay 41 is known as the world war ii veterans memorial highway And so that’s cool. ~Um, ~just a nice piece of history there. I think they’ve dedicated a number of years ago You And then Marionette is kind of the end of Wisconsin, and that’s when you jump the Marionette River, and you go to Menomonee, and uh, that’s Do do do do do.

Menomonee. Do do do do. Sorry. So that’s where you pick up highway 35 and you pretty much ride the Lake Michigan coast all the way up to Escanaba with that. And that is a great drive. So imagine you’re kind of leaving Green Bay when you’re looking across, do you see some land? That’s Door County. So there’s like an inlet.

Yeah. Yeah. So you kind of, if you think Door County, That’s what you’re kind of doing. You’re writing up in that way. So not really an eventful, uh, Escanaba night but uh

Day 2 – Escanaba to Gaylord Michigan

—

I’ve never heard it called that. Me either, so that’s why I was like, confused when I started to say it. Gaylord is like, if you think noon on the Lower Peninsula, but probably up, about two thirds up. And the goal this time was to ride two down from Escanaba across the bridge. And then 23 which is on the Huron side of the lake because we had never rode that way before so But before you get to the bridge, I would just say I just love the north side of Lake Michigan I don’t know what it is about riding and usually ~um ~West to east it’s just a great Like kind of like a lake view that you would think.

I agree. I mean some of the houses, there’s beach along most of it, but you can see the lake. ~Um, ~it’s just beautiful. Now it is my understanding you don’t necessarily want to be there in the winter, uh, because I think that’s where you get a ton of lake effect snow that just blows hard up into that area.

I believe there’s eight tables. Wow. And, uh, I think they worked on each thing one at a time, but it was really good food all made from scratch. And honestly, we needed to spend the time anywhere. We just would’ve got wet. So if you get a chance to stop at the Bear Patch restaurant, it’s recommended. Those are my favorite types of places.

I’m not, he’s got a name spelled that way, but we’ll talk about it. Uh, we missed out big time. So we’ve got another trip opportunity up there. There’s actually a pasty trail and there’s pasty trail with beer too. So like, I don’t know, this could be a good thing. So, so we ran across the Mackinac bridge. What a beautiful day.

It was a little breezy, but other than that, it was just perfect. ~Um, ~that is where on the South side, then you’d go from two to 23. So we kind of hung a, eastbound route and then rode the ~um, ~coast down 23,~ um,~ All the way down to a town called alpina ~Um ~when we just cut back directly over to gaylord But where there was a great stop that we stopped at ~Um, ~brad might not agree, but it was a little place called seymour’s long lake Again, another place that looked I was we weren’t even sure it was open.

And that’s what you do have to be careful of. Some of the places up there that get a lot of snowmobiles, they, uh, they,~ um,~ well, they, what do you call it when you put a. Hump in the middle of the road, you know, kind of a what it was. Oh, yeah a crown. Yeah crown Yep, there was a little crown there and one rider man almost lost the motorcycle So you just you do have to be paying attention when you’re pulling up to some of these places Because you’re trying to get gas But then you know just an inch or two in footing when you’re not thinking and then that weight shifts You do have to be careful ~Um, ~he didn’t dump the bike, but he did let his helmet roll all the way into the ditch, which I found amazing, and hopefully,~ um,~ is on the video, so.

After I got done laughing, I went and got the helmet. I figured that was only fair. It was nice, yeah. So day three was kind of our long road back west. We were going from Gaylord, Michigan to Tomahawk.~ Um, ~the best day we found maybe to ride M 119, which is one of the best roads, absolutely bar none in Michigan.

~Um, ~we did that on a Saturday morning. Oh my goodness. Was it dead? And it was beautiful. Perfect. Again, just one of the coolest roads.

tom: My favorite ride is from the South to the North. When you’re doing that, it’s just a little bit better views and I think it’s just the angle of the road, but it’s, they’re both good, which rides you up in the cross village and you can go up into there. And then we always end up going to bliss and funny enough, bliss kind of kind of a full revamp.

tom: And you stopped. We, well, we did. Letho’s pasties, Pasties. Sorry. Lethos pasties. That was a, that was one of the original ones. ~Um, ~so they were old school. So that was a really, it was fun to stop there. Not a lot of frills. These, there’s not options. Like no one’s gone past the fusion yet. So someday I suppose, but uh, so then we got to, got to go back across that great section of a highway to Escanaba,~ um,~ that we were talking about.

tom: That was really good. But now when we got to Escanaba, we kind of turned west.

Burnt Rollways Boat Hoist

—

Todd: Yeah.

tom: It’s in Oneida County, Wisconsin. So what this thing is, is it’s like, you know, there’s so many leaks up there and not all of them are the exact same levels.

tom: Right. And so what this thing does is, and I don’t remember which lake to which lake it does, but It will take your lake from the lower one, which I would say, it’s dammed, you know, take your boat. It would take your boat. You said take your lake. Oh, take the lake is about 20 feet lower. So we’ll take your boat.

tom: It grabs it, hoist it up 25 feet, moves it over and drops it in the other lake.

Todd: No kidding.

tom: Yeah, it’s all, it’s like an electric machine that, you know, like, like you can imagine. I mean, does it look like a crane? What? Oh yeah. Yeah. Like it just hooks onto the bottom, kind of like ugs the hole. Wow. Lifts it up.

tom: Yeah. Unbelievable boat. I mean it was beautiful and Yeah, so the guy had it and he was very proud of it. It was very cool boat But yeah, it was neat to be able to see we got to see one boat go from each way cool And yeah, so burnt rollways boat hoist if you get a chance if you’re up there, it’s by Eagle River Just a cool thing to stop and see and yeah, it’s kind of always running in the summer Yeah And it’s, it’s down some neat little roadways.

tom: And do you stop and pay to have your

Todd: boat moved or? Yes.

tom: We enjoy the Pine Tree Supper Club. And, uh, that is where, now, I unfortunately didn’t try the court jester 55 ounce. I, uh, I had to, you know, restrain slightly. I only have the king’s gut 28 ounce pry bar. Oh, all right. Well, I think the

Todd: 55 must be made for two people. They

tom: said that, but I still think we should try, you know, next time.

tom: Gotcha. I’ll get myself worked up for it, you know. So that was day three. ~Um, ~and then day four. We kind of came out of Tomahawk, and Tomahawk’s kind of in the middle of the state. And we headed, we headed west on the four lane over to Eau Claire. And, I don’t know if you’ve ever stopped at a quick trip in Wisconsin, but there’s, there’s a couple.

tom: This town is probably population 430 maybe? And I’ll bet you there’s 3, 000 people in there that day. It was unreal. It was on a Sunday and it was beautiful. We, we couldn’t have, we didn’t even plan it because I think we accidentally got over to this County J. M. And it just came in right on the street that the pie shop was on.

tom: It was great. It was really really great Were

Todd: people

tom: there to

Todd: shop were they there to? It was too small

tom: Oh, okay. People were restoring the town. I see at the time I mean, wow, we actually ran into a gentleman. Well, we bought some I bought some farm apples So some the guy picked them this morning. He said that morning and then we took a tour We were just walking along and and um this this shot like an old I would call it a general store, I guess, with nothing in it.

tom: And this guy was restoring the whole entire thing. He had sanded the floors, put like vintage wood back up on the sides and just unbelievable. And next door to that, he kind of had his little man cave. And he had like a dragster, two engine dragster from the sixties, bunch of motorcycles and all kinds of stuff.

tom: And then we ended up just coming back home, the river road. And coming back this way. So, so yeah. So, wow. It was, it was fun. ~Um, ~another good ride. ~Um, ~enjoyed it. Nothing broke down, which was kind of good. We didn’t get into rain, which is rare. That’s rare. Seems like so. So yeah, the UP for the win. But we definitely have to get up on this, this pasty trail now, but like, yeah, maybe we can combine it with Turk’s Stormy Cromer run maybe or something.

tom: I don’t know. That sounds good. I’m thinking spring next year. Yeah.

​

Toolkit

—

tom: The toolkit today, we’ll talk about backup root planning. So,

Todd: Yeah, let’s let planned into the relics. Let’s just get, yeah, we’ve, we’ve talked about that a lot.

tom: If you kind of like do some S. Find something that’s down a little further, find something that’s up. When you’re planning that way, if you have to cut through the middle, you can make up time. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: So, uh, is that what we’re going to talk about here? Well, I mean, that’s a good thing, right? Okay.

tom: But I think now what we found with this ride is that we also sometimes you might want to plan for An extra place to stop because that’s what happened for us on day three We kind of got out of dodge and we ended up we were a little ahead of schedule So we were set to maybe get in the hotel at like three o’clock in the afternoon.

tom: Yeah That’s just another kind of the yin and the yang maybe of the trip planning too, is to have a few extra places on the maps. And then, kind of like when I was looking up, when I was preparing for this episode, I wanted to kind of see, okay. The two places that we stopped for pasties, I think was Leto and, uh, Wildwood.

tom: And I was like, okay. I, I thought they were good, you know, and I, I just was like, are they the best? Mm-Hmm. . And I found that they’re not, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re good. They’re good places, but they’re not the best. So I found, ended up and then found this guy, pasty guy.com. Oh, pasty guy dot com’s got these pasty trail, you know, so like, I think we’ve talked about it before, but pre-trip planning, sometimes.

Todd: And I just like the idea that plan to maybe get to the destination at three that way You can extend if you want to.

Todd: You can take an extra little or

tom: as you go along,

Todd: like,

tom: you know, we got, I mean, yeah, we’re on track. Let’s skip the extra or no, we’re ahead of schedule. So let’s go ahead and put something else in. Yeah. ~Um, ~and so we did miss his number one recommendation, 18 out of 20 on the pasties scale,~ um,~ Lawry’s pasties, but that was all the way up in Marquette.

tom: Yeah. Cause what you don’t want to do, we’ve talked about this, I think before is you just don’t want to have it be where you’re just drained and you really just want to get back and relax or vice versa. And you just, I mean, we’ve had days where we knew this trip was going to be one of those ones where the furthest point away was the middle of the trip.

tom: So you knew your motor and back and those, Can be okay, but they can also be draining. Yeah. Yeah.

tom: If you liked the podcast today, please like and subscribe or sign up for our BMR alerts. It’s our way of keeping you in the loop.

tom: We promise no spam,

Todd: keep the spirit of adventure alive. And remember bikes, friends, and endless roads. The stories ride forever. Take care.