Aaah 5 days of pedaling "Pure Michigan"  We have pedaled by large and beautiful  dairies, large lumbering operations, golden fields of grain, beautiful Up North lakes and lastly a beautiful ride through the Pere Marquette State Forest.  We started out the trip mostly flat with a few hills, enough to reacquaint this "flatlander" from Baytown, TX with the bike gears.  By day three, I knew very well why I needed them.  Tonight we are treating ourselves to a motel in Ludington, MI . in preparation for an early departure on the SS Badger tomorrow across Lake Michigan.  We stayed at one there motel, when I asked about wi-fi they said they might get it next year, which explains lack of postings.
  However, this morning  we woke up to a cold drizzle and 58 degrees.  Now here is the difference in the sister from the north and the one from  the south, I'm freezing and Janie is in "hog heaven" as they say in my neck of the woods.  A little cooler would have been fine as we had a couple of 90+ days with high winds.  With the heat, high winds and hills (3 hs), we exercised our right of self-contained riding to call it a early day.
Along the way, we have met some very kind and helpful people.  Day 2, as we were packing up, a lady stopped  by to inquire about our trip and Janie mentioned that her telephone charger plug had lost a prong,  she said that she had several of those and would Janie  mind if she gave her one.  Janie said that would be great.  The lady said "wonderful that way I can feel part of me is on the trip".  We walked into a bar for lunch carrying items that needed charging and asked for plugs.  They had never thought about plugs before, when we left we had to walk around gathering things up.  At the same bar, they were willing to fill my cooler with ice,  the look on the ladies face when she saw our bag of wine was priceless!  She said, "you ladies know how to roll".  The proprietor of our motel this evening gave us a great price on a great room, Americas Best Value Inn.
Things I've learned:  Milk weed plants smell wonderful, never knew; milk truck drivers are much more polite than logging truck drivers;  and we are still moving this earth around judging from the number of dirt trucks.
Will check back in at next opportunity.
P.S.  The milk trucks are the big tanker trucks that go to the dairies, not the kind that used to bring the milk bottles to your front porch milk box, for those old enough to remember.