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Week 5: Bicycling Millington, MI to Ludington, MI

Total distance: 251.9 miles

Day 29 – 0 miles – Millington, MI – Rest Day # 3

Happy 4th of July!

Theme: Playing Wingspan, a fun game about birds that Paul and Maggie brought.

We spent the day hanging out with our friends and playing games. We interrupted a Wingspan marathon only to eat and to venture out into Frankenmuth. We strolled around the incredible Christmas shop there which sells Christmas tree ornaments of every color and theme imaginable.

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Week 4: Bicycling Hamilton, ON to Millington, MI

Total distance: 315.5 miles

Day 22 – 50.8 miles – Hamilton, ON to Port Ryerse, ON

By the morning, Jess’s rear tire had lost some pressure again, so it was clear there was, in fact, a leak. It still seemed slow enough that we decided to wait to patch it until we got to camp that night. Our goal for the day was to reconnect with the Adventure Cycling (AC) map near Lake Erie. We were using Google Maps directions since our Toronto detour wasn’t on the AC route. The day started out with roughly ten miles of the Escarpment Rail Trail which was beautiful. When that ended we were on Route 6 for the rest of the day, which was considerably less pretty and had a lot more traffic, but it had a decent shoulder, so the large trucks whizzing by weren’t too close.

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Week 3: Bicycling Rochester, NY to Hamilton, ON

Total distance: 233.75 miles

Day 15 – 0 miles – Rochester, NY

REST DAY! First order of business was our Healthy Me appointment which was scheduled for 10:45am. After getting weighed and measured, we had officially completed the most difficult step of saving money on next year’s health insurance premiums. We went in search of food and wifi and found ourselves in the cafe at Wegmans.

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Week 1: Bicycling Kennebunk, ME to Paradox, NY

Total distance: 276.5 miles

Day 1 – 51.5 miles – Kennebunk, ME to Province Lake

Biking was a success! We made it to Province Lake on the Maine / New Hampshire border. Somehow a tick leapt up and bit Jess in the thigh while she was biking, but she noticed right away and pulled it off. This was our first indication that this tick season was bad since we hadn’t even been in long grass.

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Phase 2: Bicycling Maine to Minnesota

After returning to the United States, we spent a whirlwind week traveling up the east coast from Philadelphia to Boston visiting family and friends along the way. We then had one week in Boston to get ready for our roughly 1,500-mile bike ride from Kennebunk, Maine to Onamia, Minnesota. We got a free tune-up on our bicycles, some extra gear, and tons of advice from some very helpful employees at Cambridge Bicycle. We traded in our hiking backpacks and hiking boots for panniers and clip-in bicycle shoes, and filled a big box with stuff we’ll need for Phase 3 but don’t want to carry on our bicycles. We did a practice ride to Westwood, MA from Boston (roughly 15 miles) to see how realistic our goal of 30 miles average per day seemed. Jess took a minor tumble when she realized at the last minute she was supposed to stop for a school bus with its stop sign out but forgot to unclip her shoes. That aside, the test was successful. We made a few minor adjustments to our weight distribution and we were set.

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Twelve Days in Colombia

Angie, Jess’s sister had been angling to go to Colombia for a while but couldn’t convince anyone to go with her. Since we were planning to go there anyway, we offered to meet up with her at the end of our trip and explore together. We flew to Bogotá from Quito because we had heard the Ecuador-Colombia border was a bit rough, and we wanted to get to Colombia more quickly. We were scheduled to meet Angie and Kevin in Guatapé, a small weekend getaway town two hours from Medellín, on May 8th.

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Adiós South America!

Phase 1 (South America) of our grand adventure is coming to an end. We are returning to the US in the middle of May for a whirlwind family-and-friend tour up the East Coast before setting off on Phase 2 (Biking Maine to Minnesota). Phase 1 has been an amazing, eye-opening experience, and we have thoroughly enjoyed spending so much time in so many different countries and meeting so many awesome people. Despite moving every few days to somewhere new, we have fallen into a routine and are looking forward to shaking things up again.

We hope to see you on our path through the USA!

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Ecuador Redeems Itself in Our Eyes

Two night buses in a row sounds a bit crazy, and if you’d asked us four months ago we would have said that wasn’t a good plan. However, we suddenly found ourselves on a tight schedule despite having had four months to travel and we needed to make some quick progress. Jess’s sister is meeting us in Colombia on May 8th which means we need to get to Quito in time for our flight to Bogotá on May 6th. Since we have friends in Quito we want to spend some time with them, so we’re shooting to be there by May 3rd, and Quito is three night buses from Chachapoyas which we left on April 28th. In addition, we really wanted to visit Cuenca on our way to Quito so we could see something new in Ecuador. Since Eric really doesn’t like only spending one night in a hostel (moving every day), we needed to be in Cuenca by April 30th. That meant two night buses; one from Chachapoyas to Chiclayo arriving at 5:30am and one that evening from Chiclayo to Cuenca departing at 5:30pm.

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