Adventure Motorcycle Blog

I didn’t exactly have plans this year for Memorial Day weekend compared to years past, so I made my own and took off on the bike. Friday afternoon for no particular reason I made the decision to go motocamping up in the MI UP the following morning. Granted, it’s the same area the five of us will base out of this coming September for the MI UP and Northern WI trip, but it was more aligned with me just getting out and about for a day or so in an area I hadn’t been to since I was a little kid. Friday after work I called the Rippling River Resort and reserved a primitive tent spot at their park. The website looked great so thought I’d give it a try. Friday evening I pulled the bike panniers out of the shed, cleaned off the dirt leftover from the NM BDR from last September, and then installed it all on the bike. I have a little room down in my basement dedicated to bike trip planning and moto camping gear so I went down there, did a little in-house shopping and collected the basics – tent, 15 degree North Face bag, winter riding gloves, beanie, air mattress, stove, chair, air compressor, tubes, tool kit, zip ties, duct tape, water/fuel bottle, and a few other odds and ends. Saturday morning I layered up with thermals, my heavy riding pants/jacket and set off. The GPS shot me up towards Madison, over to Appleton, along Lake Michigan then up to the Marquette, MI- UP area. It was mid 50s, cloudy and actually a great ride. I had just enough layers on to where I was sweating or frozen. I’m all about podcasts when riding so I had Theo Von on for a few hours then switched to some others. I arrived to the campsite around 3:30, signed in and went and found my tent spot. I setup, changed, took a few pics and then it was time to go get firewood from the shed up by the office. They didn’t have a delivery cart like a lot of places so I strapped two bundles to the back of my bike and brought them down. This place had a pool, hot tub, bar, and really nice spots for travel trailers. Back behind the bar and down the stairs there was a little open brick pizza oven and next to that a massive rock fire pit, wooden chairs and a bunch of people. This was all on a riverbank and probably one of the nicest sites I’ve ever been to. A ton of planning went into setting this facility up – highly recommend! Once all settled in, I made my way to the bar/fire pit, ordered a pizza and an old fashioned and hung out with the others for a couple hours. A few were local, but others were from Madison, Minneapolis, Detroit, and some other places. One of the bartenders was originally from the Rockford area, but moved up there after her first vacation years ago. I can see why, it’s just an amazing place. After hanging with the others for a while, I made my way back to camp, lit the fire and relaxed. There were four other tent sites down by me and they were all mountain bike people. The fire eventually went out and it was time to crash. I think it got down to 38/39 degrees that night. My North Face bag was perfect so no complaints there. The next morning I got up at 4:45 (no alarm needed-just wired that way), made some coffee, and made my way down to the shower building. I walked by at least 15 big 5th wheels and travel trailers. The entire area was silent besides the hum of the trailer heaters. After all that I broke down camp and was out of there before any of my tent neighbors were even awake. After I left the campground I headed 10 minutes North up to Marquette, MI – UP. A few days prior I had reached out to a guy I grew up with in IL that lived in the area and we met at a place called Donckers for breakfast. Prior to breakfast, the last time I had seen Kurt was probably in 93. From there I cruised around town, and followed the Lake Superior shoreline out of town for a bit. I snapped a bunch of pics, topped off on gas and headed South. All in all it was a great trip. I traveled three states in 33 hours and it was somewhere around 780 miles. The next adventure starts this Saturday…. More to come!