Monday, August 2

What a great day of cycling!

We left our hotel about 8:00 this morning, using the sidewalk to backtrack west on Michigan Avenue. I am not a fan of sidewalk cycling, but the alternative was to cross 4 lanes of traffic to make a U-Turn down the road, and the intersection was around a blind curve, so we didn’t want to do that.

We rode down Miller Road past Ford’s River Rouge Plant. which is an awesome sight in itself, and is also an historic place and the site of The Battle of The Overpass. I was really happy to see it.

We continued into Detroit, using Fort St and Jefferson Ave to make our way through Detroit paralleling the Detroit River. I had heard a lot about the depopulation of Detroit, but it was still stunning to see it. Huge, wide boulevards of four and six lanes with almost no traffic, at 9:00AM on a Monday morning. Whole neighborhoods of abandoned buildings. Home, factories, and shops burned out and decaying into the ground. It was both sad and fascinating to see.

We rode through downtown, past the Ford building, past the General Motors building. On our way out of town we rode past a Chrysler Assembly Plant. Both south of downtown, and to a lesser extent north of downtown, Detroit looked like a very depressed city. Then we crossed the border into Grosse Point Park, and in the distance of one side of the street to the other, everything was wealth and huge mansions with manicured lawns and gardens tended by hired help.

We rode through the various Grosse Points and finally reached St. Clair, and a cyclist coming out of a side street called out to us. It turned out to be Dick Williams, who I connected with on the ‘net while planning this trip, and who has shared lots of good info about routing through the Detroit area. Dick was heading into Detroit to do some photography, but graciously offered to guide us through his neck of the woods. We stopped for 2nd breakfast with Dick and enjoyed chewing the fat along with our meal.

The cycling today was wonderful. Smooth pavement, no hills, and, for the most part, a tailwind. We also had Dick who pulled us for a number of miles. All of this added up to a relatively easy day of 65 miles ro so. We are now camped under a couple of nice shade trees, yards from the shore of the St. Clair River. We can easily see the houses across the river, in Canada, where we will be tomorrow. We are only about 7 miles south of Marine City, where we will get the ferry to Canada in the morning.

Oh, and a couple camped here in their RV has invited to dinner in less than an hour. Life is good!

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