Finally you’re ready for that Circle Tour of Lake Superior.

If you’re like most folks, you’ll begin by pushing the pedal toward the metal.

A smaller selection of travelers suggest another way: By pushing the pedal, and pushing the pedal and …

Pedal-pushing instead of taking the trip by car lets travelers experience the tastes, sounds, smells and feel of Lake Superior along with its sights, avow the bicycle veterans of the Circle Tour. It can be the good, the bad and the incredibly beautiful.

“You smell things, you feel temperature changes,” says John Schmitt, a restaurateur in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who did a six-week tandem bike trip with his wife, Mary Brodbeck, two years ago.

“As you climb, the air becomes different. You experience the rain, the wind, the sun. When you’re in the car, it’s almost like watching a movie,” John says. “On a bike … it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.” 

Mary, an artist, devised the Lake Superior tour to reap inspiration. For that, the bicycle lent a bonus. 

“You’re always close to the land and the water,” she says. “Just being able to go slow, I could see everything as we went, really closely, from the rocks that the road had been carved through and the different kinds of roadside grasses … we could smell them all.”

Architect Sean Bujold of Menomonie, Wisconsin, who made a solo trip a few years earlier, remembers gorgeous lakeside scenery.

And he remembers some rainy days and those annoyingly separated slabs of pavement. “You’ve got the clicking you hear (while) in a car? Well, it’s quite jarring if you’re on a bicycle,” warns Sean.

Even rainy days are bearable, Mary says. “The challenge is to have the experience and to enjoy the experience or to accept the experience.”

“From a cycling point of view, it’s got everything,” says John, “some incredible climbs, some incredible descents, wonderful paved road … and two-lane roads with trucks going by you at 70 miles an hour.”

The three Circle Tour vets vote the top of the lake tops for spectacular scenery … and the most challenging bicycling. “That’s the stuff you remember,” Mary remembers.

Mary Brodbeck and her husband, John Schmitt, (top and right) use a souped-up Santana Touring Tandem to propel themselves around Lake Superior.

But while the north shore is among the most rugged and wild along the lake, along the somewhat recently paved Trans-Canada Highway 17 comes some of the smoothest, albeit mountainous, biking.

For John and Mary, the truly wild shore came in the south. “Sault Ste. Marie all the way to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is probably the most desolate country we rode through,” recalls John. Desolation has its rewards: “We saw lynx and coyotes and moose and no traffic.”

Minnesota’s north shore provided ample shoulder space for biking, but is also heavily trafficked. The tunnels were impressive, Mary says.

“Every part of the lake had its own charm,” concedes John.

Finding food is rarely a problem. The Michigan couple and the Wisconsin solo rider all towed a trailer with supplies, but the only long stretches without any wayside markets are from Batchawana Bay to Wawa then to White River. Pack lunch and a beverage or two for at least that stretch. 

Sean, with a faster moving pace, packed little when it came to food. John and Mary carried a couple days’ provisions.

“We ate less big meals, but we were constantly eating,” John says. “I bet I ate about 100 pounds of peanuts.”

Munching with the locals means good food and good conversation. “We ate a lot of smoked fish, which was absolutely wonderful. The different areas have different types of smoked fish,” John recalls.

Circle Tour bikers should know how to do many of their own roadside repairs.John and Mary’s pace ranged from 60 to 100 miles per day, depending on conditions and terrain, but they often stopped for side trips. Mary took about two hours each day to make sketches. MARY BRODBECK

Physical ability and your schedule will dictate your pace.

Sean, who has taken up bicycle racing, sometimes biked hard and fast. He averaged 80 miles per day, achieving up to 100 miles each of the last three days and finishing the entire circle of about 1,300 miles in 15 days.

Scenery is just one treat on the tour. People are another.

John and Mary saw few other bikers on their six-week trip from mid-July until the beginning of September. Sean’s early July tour crossed the paths of many cross-country bicyclists.

“There’s lots of people out there riding,” Sean says. In Ontario, he met a man who celebrated his retirement from the Canadian Navy with a bike trip. Sean also biked for a time with a group of senior citizens pedaling across Canada.

Going solo forced Sean to reach out and meet people, who seemed ever friendly. Once when Sean stopped to tip back a cold one at a local pub, a stranger across the bar bought the brew when he found out Sean was biking the Circle Tour.

John and Mary believe the decision to go tandem was perfect for them. “In hindsight, I can’t imagine doing it without tandem,” says John, who admits the bicycle built for two totally annoyed him on his first try.

Mary insisted on the double arrangement, concerned that on separate bikes she’d constantly play catch up with John. Once he got the rhythms of the tandem, John acknowledges working together worked best.

“It became almost a ballet. There were days that were absolute magic on the bike,” he says. John still remembers a gray Sunday in the Keweenaw Peninsula when the sun suddenly came out and a couple of red-tailed hawks led the bikers on their way. “To be able to share that with the person right behind me …” says John, implying the “wow.”

“There would be times when we were totally silent for two or three hours and there would be other times where we would be jabbering away,” he adds.

Planning before the first turn of the bikers’ chain adds to the pleasure of the trip and heightens anticipation.

John and Mary scheduled specific overnights in motels or hotels for variety and comfort. Sean made such stops when weather or worn muscles warranted it.

The Michigan couple says they planned for about a year, using Lake Superior Magazine’s Travel Guide as a major source. (No, we didn’t ask them to say that!)

In their pre-trip jitters, John and Mary discovered what may well be a touring gender gap:

“I was afraid my body wasn’t going to do the trip,” says John. “Mary was having great anxiety a truck was going to pancake us. Both of those were unfounded.”

Most drivers respect a biker’s need for space around the lake, but Sean took additional precautions along Highway 17 in Ontario. “If semis were coming from both directions, I just got off and waited and they’d wave thanks.”

Tour preparation should include at least a little physical and bike training, but don’t be afraid of the challenge, the veterans say.

On the advice of a circle-tour experienced Boy Scout leader (these guys are always prepared), Sean started his trip going east along the south shore. With Lake Superior winds usually blowing from the west, the gentler southern biking also provided good tail winds his first few days, Sean says. The harder terrain then came after he’d gotten physically stronger.

“If you take it in pieces that are manageable, there’s nothing that’s going to stop you,” he says.

John and Mary went north and east, saying that wind played little role and they wanted the tougher biking earlier.

“Whenever you go on a trip of that nature, it’s two or three weeks before you start getting into the groove,” says John. “I probably went through about 150 aspirin that first week.… By the end of the trip, only our butts were sore.”

Feedback: edit@akesuperior.com