Tuesday, July 5, 2011

June 21, 2011. Big Rapids to Clare. 48 miles.

It was pouring rain when we got up in the morning. We went to breakfast and watched the torrents of rain out the window while we drank a second cup of coffee. Fortunately it let up by about 8:30 and we were able to take our tent down in a light mist, which stayed with us throughout the morning.

Toby's new favorite snack while riding is beef sticks. I told him he needed to eat some protein, not just all sugary snacks and this is what he settled on. OK by me....

One of the sag stops was at a farm that had peacocks and turkeys. Toby and this tom had a long conversation--I told Toby that he must sound like a female turkey for this guy to have gotten so excited--every time Toby gobbled the tom gobbled back until I told him (Toby not the turkey) that we had to go.

He wanted to take a photo of this barn because his friend's initials were shingled into the roof.


We rode a bike path for a while today, and the "licorice lady" was at the end of the path with her usual goodies. She is always the last sag stop of the day and we all look forward to seeing her.


It had stopped raining when we got to the school, and we were able to dry everything out before setting up camp. Once we were set up another round of thunderstorms came through.


Toby and Bill were both snoozing when I noticed that we were floating.... I woke them up and said "we gotta get out of here!". We were in the middle of a small lake! It had rained 3 inches and our tent (among others) was in at least 6 inches of water! We evacuated, set Toby up in the gym, and emptied the tent, moved it to higher ground and moved back in. But our stuff was soaked! I broke the tent zipper during this operation and it took about 20 minutes to get it back on track.


I strung our clothesline up in the women's locker room and hung up the wet stuff. Toby's bag was fairly dry so he was able to sleep in it the rest of the night. Bill and I shared one mummy bag as the other one was very very wet.... fortunately it was warm enough that we did not need to be in the bag, just lightly covered with it. What an adventure!

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