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Our trip started out by heading north to my brother’s in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. We knew from last year that the riding was good in that area, so we were looking forward to that (and this time we wouldn’t have to rely on maps, since I have a Garmin 705 now).

The area is pretty much farms. Both dairy and crops…. And wind farms.

A few wind turbines….. Am I wind powered now?

Dairy machines.

7 Hills Road near Fond du Lac.

One of the roads we worked to get into our long route was the semi-famous 7 Hills Rd. This is an ~8 mile road that includes probably about 12 hills, not 7, but some of them might not count. Each hill goes into the next.

After spending a few days down at my brother’s in Wisconsin, Andrea and I headed further north to my mom’s in Marquette, Michigan. Last night Andrea plotted out a semi-ambitious route from Marquette that was likely to involve some gravel…

We started out right away on the gravel going up and over Mount Marquette.

Gravel road… pretty rideable.

Overlook over the city of Marquette.

After we descended, we rode down the highway to the next section of gravel. It started out pretty innocent, the pavement ending a few miles off the highway, but then as the road narrowed, the sand started…. And deep. We walked through the deep stuff, and managed to ride the not-so-deep stuff (we started to get pretty good at that, some skills that will play out at some point). After another mile or two the road went to pretty ridiculous, turning into a sandy, rocky, 2 track… Just when we were about half way to the next pavement (we think), the road ended at a private road.

End of the road and deep, deep sand.

So we had to turn around and head back…. after getting back to the highway, we continued on finding some more gravel along the way to the east end of our planned route (this time it went back to the pavement again). Just when we thought we were doing well on completing our loop, it happened again… The road (this one completely rideable) ended at two closed gates.

The route we plotted on MapMyRide (in red) and the actual route (in blue) we took on the ride are shown below… The two dead ends are on the south/west and the east end of our actual route.