DALMAC Day 1

Wednesday, 1 September, 2010. We dropped off our gear at the MSU Pavilion the night before so that we wouldn't have to trek all the way into Lansing the next morning and we could just leave from the house. This would give us approximately 8 miles less than the mileage for the day, but that was fine with us.

We woke up to a windy day with forecasts of rain in the afternoon. Our goal was to get to Shepherd (our over night stay) before the rain started, so we left prior to 7 a.m. and didn't even take the ride route; rather, we took the most direct route, through Elsie and Ashley, then Ithaca, before finally catching up with the DALMAC route south of Alma. We had strong winds from the WSW so the north legs were a tailwind and the west legs were a headwind. Our first real stop wasn't until Alma!

We were the first bikers to arrive at Shepherd HS. We even beat the luggage trucks there. The luggage trucks eventually arrived and we grabbed our gear after unloading the trucks and set up our tents out near the road and parking lot. It rained a little that evening, but it wasn't too bad since we had everything all set up. It rained virtually every day of DALMAC!?!

Ben spent the night in our tent since he finished late at CMU and then started early the next morning. All in all, a pretty good day.