Bicycling between Grand Marais and Newberry via H-58 and H-17
I decided to make this the first route to write about on upbt because I've been attracted to it as an automobile route since the 1980s, and more recently have included it on a couple of my UP bike tours.
This is a special route to any fans of the UP. It traverses mostly wild forest lands, and provides some of the best and easiest 'wild shore' Lake Superior experiences possible by bike. Because the long stretch of H-58 between the Alger/Luce County line and Muskallonge Lake State Park is unpaved, many automobile travelers are frightened to drive it, thus there is little traffic compared to H-58 along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore west of Grand Marais. It's not exactly a deserted road, however, and in midsummer there can be enough traffic (and dust) to be a little annoying - but not so much that I'd say that there's any other route in the UP that I like more!
You might be thinking that a 15 mile stretch of sandy unpaved road isn't the best for a loaded touring bike, and in general you'd be correct. What it takes is a little luck, timing, and planning. Luck - that it hasn't been so dry that the road has a lot of loose sand and that the traffic hasn't degraded the surface; timing - not a busy time like a summer weekend; and planning - to travel when the conditions may have the previous two qualities. One should consider this route before attempting it, particularly because the next closest route east-west in the part of the UP is M-28, and if you find H-58 poor riding you'll have a long way to backtrack to get to M-28.
On the other hand, if you get H-58 under the right conditions, it can be very ridable - I've done it twice recently with a very loaded touring bike with 32cm tires. On both occasions I was fortunate in that there had been decent rains in the week previous to my travel, which minimized the squishy loose sand. In 2009 I was traveling before the busy season, in 2007, after. And in both cases I took a chance hoping for the best and had luck, though in both cases I also camped for a few days along the shore and saw the road condition get less rideable as the surface became drier.
One dark cloud, in my opinion, hangs over H-58 east: paving. It's been proposed for years, but still hasn't happened. I got a little shock a few years ago when one map (the EUP bicycling map, actually) showed it as having been paved; this turned out to be incorrect thank goodness. It's unfortunate that H-58 west is all paved, straightened, and widened now, allowing more, heavier, and faster automobiles to go faster and with less effort on what not too long ago was a pretty quiet stretch of road. But east of Grand Marais it's still a little old-style.
There's much more to add here, but this is a little bit toget started...
To add details: topography, time a ride after rain, best season is autumn, etc.
Hills, squishiness, etc.
