The long rides special interest group did two long rides in July (apart from individual long riders participating in the most excellent 2013 KalTour on June 30), plus a couple of shorter exploratory rides. One was a tour of the Battle Creek Linear Park Trail starting in Portage, heading home by way of Richland. The other was a 136 miler starting on a route that led from Portage to Union City to Decatur to Mattawan to Plainwell and back to Portage. The two exploratory rides were between Coloma and Dowagiac, and between Coloma and South Haven.
Marc Irwin and I toured the Battle Creek Linear Park Trail (BCLPT) on Saturday, July 6. The weather was favorable, if a bit warm, with the winds forecasted to blow us home from the east. We got to the trail by way of the back roads heading east on Romence Road, which passes by some pretty little bogs prior to the turn north at 26th Street. We passed by little East Lake and beautiful golden fields of wheat before crossing the 35th Street bridge into Galesburg. Outside of Augusta we turned onto Fort Custer Drive / River Road, which more or less follows the Kalamazoo River until the trail began.
There, our real adventure began. Following the BCLPT requires a map and some patience, plus the ability to follow or re-find a trail that often seems to disappear into thin air. I'll save more detailed comments about the BCLPT for another time, except to say that portions of it are very pretty, especially the segments that run between Clara's restaurant in downtown BC and the Kalamazoo River, which has a very Parisian feel to it, and a stretch that takes in scenic views of the Battle Creek, just south of Bailey Park.
The trip back to Portage, was more of a milk-run, except to say that the smooth new road surfaces on M-89 made biking between Battle Creek and Richland a little easier than otherwise.
On Sunday, July 14, Marc Irwin, Rick Whaley, and I embarked on a journey that at times felt like bicycling through a huge sun-filled sauna. We rode for a social hour together before Rick "Race-Ready" Whaley pulled ahead at a pace that Marc and I thought better of trying to match. Unknown to the others (or even myself at the time) that morning I had accidently downed the contents of my night-time aspirin/drowsy-antihistamine pill cup instead of my usual morning vitamin/mineral tablets, with the result that my typical slow pace had a dollop of slower-than-molasses added to it. Marc kept riding way ahead of me. The gap grew until I finally caught up at lunch time in Union City.
We rode to Union City along quiet rural roads that included R Avenue east to the Calhoun County line, K Drive S, and south on 7 and 8 Mile Roads before stopping at the (very friendly) Subway near the intersection of 8 Mile and M-60. The route between Union City and Decatur was familiar to everyone who has ever ridden Rick's famous "W Ride." En route, Marc peeled off back north near Sprinkle Road, counting a door-to-door journey of 70 miles, good enough on a very hot and steamy day. Leaving Kalamazoo County, the westward path was along roads less traveled, including Shaw and 92nd Avenue, which felt delightfully shady and downhill(?) most of the way. Between Decatur and Mattawan, I enjoyed the feeling of being blown along the isolated stretches Burgess Road by a southwesterly breeze.
The stretch heading north between Mattawan and Plainwell included riding the length of VanKal Avenue north of Red Arrow Highway, Wolf Road, and one of my favorites, North 2nd Street. Between Plainwell and Portage, the milk-run south on Douglas was another familiar stretch, but this time made more "interesting" by about five miles of fresh chip-seal. The dust raised by the few passing cars was thick enough so that at least one motorcyclist passing me had pulled a bandana over his nose. The high humidity and heat, plus a day filled with direct sun on bare skin, definitely added to the challenge of biking over hill and dale, but by day's end both Rick and I added another route and counted 219 more kilometers on our randonneuring logs.
(Editor's Note: Yes, it was hot. Yes, it was humid. The "highlight" of the ride for me was reaching the last control stop at the Shell station on the corner of Westnedge and Romence Road and immediately getting a cramp in my right hamstring as I dismounted from my bike. I guess I didn't drink enough fluids during the latter stages of the ride. You know it was a hard ride when you find yourself wishing that you had driven the 1.5 miles from your home to the start of the ride, while riding home after the finish of the ride.)
A desire to explore the "wilderness" between Dowagiac and South Haven led to the last two rides of the month, each about 40 miles round trip.
The first was solo, on a clear, cool morning with hardly any traffic on the rural tarmac that stretches between Coloma and Dowagiac. I took one way there and another back, using the excellent Southwest Michigan Road and Trail Bicycle Guide as my map. (By the way, this map is available at our local MDOT office on Kilgore Road. The map differentiates gravel from paved roads, is color coded to indicate traffic densities, and clearly marks roads with shoulders.) Heading south, I found that Sister Lakes Road passed through an area possessing a resort-like feeling, and that Indian Lake Road took me by the entrance to the "ILYC" (Indian Lake Yacht Club, est. 1935), seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Ah, but it was I who was the voyager, visiting lands obviously well explored and long settled, but new to me, that morning. The return trip zigzagged up Middle Crossing Road and from there through a different path through farmland. En route, I encountered another marvel: a signed bike route just northwest of Dowagiac! (See http://www.casscoroad.com/maps/maps.htm for the Silver Creek Bike Path and another, featured on the Cass County Road Commission's web page.) I'm leaving that route for another day, but in the meantime, I'm struck with the wonder of how the communities involved worked together to pull off such a great bike-friendly idea.
The second exploratory ride was with long rides SIG member David Fatzinger. The morning of Wednesday, July 24 couldn't have been nicer for bike riding: clear, low humidity, temperatures in the low to mid 70s, with a mild wind from the northwest that promised to blow us home. North out of Coloma we followed Coloma N Road / 78th Street, jogging east to 76th Street. At CR 380, we again jogged east to check out an entrance to the Van Buren Trail. There, the VBT was as I remembered it from a previous ride: a largely overgrown two track, so we skipped it and road north into town on M140 (very busy/urban feeling, but most of what we rode on had wide shoulders and rumble cuts that provided a measure of separation). From there, it was an easy matter to ride to lunch at the Subway on Broadway in South Haven, more or less overlooking the Black River. Of course, on such a ride on such a beautiful day, Dave and I made a complete tour of the harbor area on both sides of the river. Heading back south, we hugged the shoreline as much as we could. The beach was dotted with people; the lighthouse was as scenic as ever at the entrance to the channel. We tried our best to vary our route, so we followed Monroe south, then 76th Street down to the Blue Star Highway, heading east back to 76th near Van Buren State Park. From there we more or less retraced our route back into Coloma, exploring a bit more to confirm a mapping error that showed 78th as skirting the northeast segment of the Ross Coastal Plain Marsh (but there is no north-south road there).
As a result of our explorations, I can report back that there is indeed a very pleasant north-south biking corridor between Dowagiac-Coloma-South Haven. Those wishing to take your own riding adventure in those lands will hardly find a "bad" road to bike.
By the time you read this report, I hope some of you will have ridden one of KBC's classic long rides - the South Haven ride on August 3, led by Rick Whaley. I'm looking forward to Rick's description already. Don't forget - if you have a notable ride to report, please share your account in Pedal Press!
Paul Selden
