Leelanau, Michigan - long run (Read 585 times)

I'm going to be in Leland Michigan for a wedding in two weeks and have a 14 miler planned that weekend. I planned out a route, but have no idea of the traffic volume or anything else that could affect the quality of the run. If anyone has any comments on the course, or would suggest another course, I'd love to hear it. Link to the course here. Thanks in advance.

*sigh* The best meal we've ever had was at a restaurant in Suttons Bay that is apparently no more (Key to the County). $130 (and 2 bottles of their cheapest dry riesling...Black Star Farms Arcturos) later and I was "too drunk to f*ck." We stayed in Leland for a weekend at the Whaleback Inn when we were first trying to get preggers. We were there in the Spring, before the big tourist season, so things were still very quiet up there. I imagine that now there'd be a great deal more traffic...cars and cyclists. Gorgeous area, though. A lot like where I grew up (Door Co., WI) before it became overdeveloped and crammed with condos. I think those stretches on 22 and 204 could be fairly busy, but traffic doesn't seem to fly along too fast. I seem to recall that 204 was fairly wide-open with decent shoulders. k

So I did the "around the lake" run I originally mapped out. I had an alternate route that I was going to run that involved driving ~5 miles to the little town of Lake Leelanau, parking the car and getting on some nicer roads with lighter traffic. That changed when my Dad was interested in starting out the run with me. It didn't make much sense for us to put 20 miles on 2 cars for him to run 4 miles. We just left from the hotel we were staying at, but MI-22 and 204 ended up being fine for a longer run. The shoulder was definitely huge...and had a 2-3 foot wide strip of gravel off the paved shoulder. Jeff, the roads on the back side of the lake were much more ideal. Running those would have been great, but the 2 miles with my Dad was more than a fair trade-off. Zoomers and Jeff, thanks again for the input!