Well dirty Mike and the boys got one last ride in...... March 9-11.....
Friday we rode local trails from my cabin and did around 100 miles.
Rode 2 miles along the road to get to the trails - straight blacktop scratching sounds on all three of my machines.
Once we got into town, trails were VERY icy until we reached Iron River, MI. Then you could see a little more snow on the trails.
The grade was good & bad, any place the sun was beating down the trails showed bare stone / gravel, in the shade - totally able to ride.....
Made it to the Wooden Nickle for some burgers and beers.... Proceeded West towards Watersmeet, MI and ran trail 15 North to Sidnaw.
Conditions were great North of Iron River. Some icy corners, but overall good trail riding..... Once we got to Sidnaw, local riders told us the trail system to complete our loop sucked bad.
So, we ended up double tracking back the way we came. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.....
Friday night, the rest of the posse filtered in. Johnny Z and Kingpin and Fireball. We toasted with some Spotted Cow and Krack'n Rum.... Always nice to see the group back together ! I miss riding with those dudes....
Saturday, we ran the trailers to Champion, MI. Around 1 hour N/E from our base camp.
We rode trail 5 up towards Big Bay, then took the 310 loop towards Marquette, then to Big Bay.
Stopped for lunch at the lumber jack in Big Bay. Ran around that area for a while, as the conditions on and off trail were pretty nice.
Again, doubled back the way we came on trail #5 due to time and distance. I had my two sons with (ages 14 &17) and didn't want to attempt the 250 mile day that we had planned from Champion, to Big Bay, to L'Anse, to Three Lakes, to Republic, back to Champion. Even with the much shorter route, my youngest son still managed to jump off the trail and fall into a culvert sunken depression along trail side - at the end of the day, he was beat tired.
Loaded up and drove back to base camp, cooked up some tasty steaks and planned on binge drinking all night long. As it were, we all fell asleep watching a movie holding beer cans at around 10:30PM

Oh well, that's how it goes when you work on the trail system, I guess....
