Lansing to Benton Harbor August 1st

Kobie and I slept in a corner of the gym of the Christian High School – about 100 of us, the rest strewn about in hallways. I was quite tired after the high speed pace line of yesterday and slept like a log, unaware of any snoring. Had a glorious warm shower since I was in the first group in.  We were treated to a great dinner and ice cream social last night. New people joined, like Susan Deckinga on her recumbent, wife of Mark that broke his leg on the first day. She will ride with us for 3 days.

Today we rode on trails a lot. Fantastic to ride in a green tunnel!  I know that we were passing through the city of Gary, one of the poorest and most run down cities in the USA, but we were tunneling through on the rail trails where we were shielded from seeing all the run down boarded up houses and buildings and broken infrastructure that we saw on the 2008 tour in Gary.  

Benton Harbour is quite pretty with all the boats on the water. There is a very lovely beach with soft yellow sands, the dunes that line the coast of Lake Michigan.   Kobie was asked to mark the roads with arrows on the turns and he spent all afternoon doing that. He did a very good job. He also had to do a photo shoot on the beach for the Mini Sea to Sea ( or Lake to Lake) – 9 riders from Immanuel CRC in GR: 3 dads and their sons and 2 other boys, dipped their tires in Lake Michigan and will stay with us to dip their tires in Lake Huron. The youths were super excited to ride with us and we were happy to have them along. We spent the night at Lighthouse ministries.  (More to follow...catching up on blog)  :-)