Copied from my old web site, more or less, 5-Jun-2007
The destination for this weekend tour, which turned out to be the last one in 2005, was the Joseph Bailly homestead at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
Schoolcraft is over 30 miles from home, a little over one third of the way to the first day’s destination of Niles. There is a town park a couple of blocks from Ebeneezer Lakin Brown’s old home. It’s a good place to brew a cup of coffee and a cup of soup.
The route to Niles includes a segment that belongs on my “Favorite Roads” pages. I call it the Valley Road route, but it’s longer than the part that’s designated by that name on the maps. It starts here in Van Buren County, where the vineyards begin. (This is a view looking back east in the direction of Schoolcraft.)
I rode a few hundred feet and stopped for another photo. If I hadn’t been in somewhat of a hurry, I could have stopped for many more.
This is on Shaw Road or 92nd Avenue, I’m not sure which, but it’s on the way down to Valley Road. The sun was already getting low in the sky. That’s what I get for trying to do a 90 mile ride in October, and not leaving home until noon.
Valley road: It’s a broad, flat valley, good for truck farming. On the east end there are sometimes onions to smell, but not in late October. The road follows the south edge where the farmsteads are located, just above the bottom.
My favorite part of the Valley Road route ends not far from here, where the road curls to the left, up and out of the valley. The shadows were getting long, and it was still another 25 miles to the campground at Niles. I ended up riding only half of the remaining distance. I stopped a little way past Dowagiac, where my wife came and got me. It was a good thing, because construction detours would have taken me off of the familiar roads, which would have complicated things in the dark. Thus ended the first day. It was a ride of 73 miles. I didn’t feel a need to come back and do the skipped miles the next morning. If I hadn’t gone this route several times in the past I probably would have.
