Man rides 685 miles of Iron Belle Trail

By LARRY HOLCOMBE

lholcombe@yourdailyglobe.com

Ironwood - Eleven days, 685 miles. All on a bicycle. All on the Iron Belle Trail.

That summed up the bulk of Tomas Quinones' vacation back to his home state of Michigan this month.

He started at Belle Isle in Detroit on July 16 and rolled across the bridge across the Montreal River on Wednesday morning.

If your counting, that's 12 days, but the software engineer from Portland, Oregon, took the second day off as he visited his parents in Grand Blanc after a "fairly easy day" of 85 miles, mostly on rail-to-trail trails and designated bike lanes along highways - all designated as Iron Belle Trail, he told the Daily Globe on Wednesday morning as he rested a bit and chatted with a few locals in Depot Park.

Quinones said it was his first trek on the Iron Belle and found the route through information he received from Michigan Department of Natural Resources and information online about another's ride in 2018. There were dedicated trails - 25 miles in Oakland County and five to six miles in Bay City - and 65 miles of hard-packed snowmobile trail between Gaylord and Mackinaw City. Otherwise, until he picked up the paved trail in Bessemer, there was a lot of riding along designated roadways. He was grateful for what trail signage he found, especially the mile markers between Bessemer and Ironwood.

"I texted my wife, 'only 5 miles to go.' It was a nice countdown," he said. When he crossed the bridge into Hurley, he did a "victory lap" around a few blocks before returning into Michigan.

Quinones said he enjoyed a ride around Mackinac Island as part of the trip. He took the ferry from Mackinaw City and then to St. Ignace, as they wouldn't allow him to ride on the bridge. There is a van that will drive a rider and their bike across, but he figured he'd take in the island. He sent his wife a postcard, which she got a couple days later. The fudge he bought didn't last until Ironwood.

Besides the stop at his folks' home in Grand Blanc and another night at his sister's place in Gaylord, he mostly pitched his tent in a campground along the route. He did stay with a person he found online at warmshowers.com in Iron River, who hosts people making similar sorts of treks.

Quinones did the ride on his Surly Disc Trucker bicycle. "It's a touring bike, built for all-day rides and carrying gear," he said. "It's not built for speed."

Quinones, who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights, said he moved to Portland in 2005. He said even though he works for a mobile app company, his ride still constituted a vacation.

He said the Iron Belle ride, while long, was easier than an eight-day ride through the Oregon Outback, from south to north across central Oregon from Klamath Falls to the Columbia River. "It's a mostly gravel and much hillier, but now I've bisected two states," he said.

His plan on Wednesday was to get a beer and burger and box up his bike and ship it home. A man he met in Ironwood's Depot Park along the Iron Belle had offered him a ride to the airport Thursday morning to begin the flight home.

"I met a lot of really nice people along the way, especially here," said Quinones.

The Iron Belle Trail is actually two trails - both beginning at Belle Isle in the Detroit River and ending in Ironwood. One is a non-motorized dedicated route that goes north along the east side of the lower peninsula and continues along the southern part of the Upper Peninsula. The other is a designated hiking trail which roughly travels the west side of the lower peninsula and the northern part of the U.P. Both trails have dedicated routes, but are also still in the improvement stages.

Locally, the Western Gateway Trail Authority has worked to pave parts of a former railroad grade from Ironwood as far east as Ramsay, with hopes of reaching Wakefield and Sunday Lake. Other groups across the state are working on various sections. Much of the non-motorized trail's dedicated route is along roadways, though, including much of U.S. 2 across the U.P.

As for the hiking trail, part of it treks along the North Country Trail, including through Gogebic County, visiting the waterfalls along the Black River and Copper Peak.