Monday, July 11, 2022, Day 41:
The hotel had a nice breakfast spread and I ate too much, as usual. I watched and read the news while eating. Sheri came for a quick bite before heading to the fitness room for a stint on the elliptical.
Today was pretty tough because of strong headwinds and crosswinds. The first 30 miles weren’t too bad as I was fresh and the Saginaw Rails-to-Trails path had lots of trees to shield me from the wind. The next 24 miles were brutal but I just put my head down, downshifted, and turned the pedals. I was on a road with little shoulder and too many cars. Eventually, I rolled into a park and found Sheri sitting in the car. Rain was coming. We took a 90-minute break to wait out the rain. We ate, chatted, and read our books.
The final 24 miles were still rough, but the roads were better and almost deserted of traffic. The last 11 miles were all on dirt, farm roads, but the surface was good and no issue.
Sheri found us a campground, but our site was near an algae-covered frog pond. Just as I arrived, a family with three kids headed right passed us to the lake. All carried small nets at the end of small poles. It wasn’t but a few minutes before they’d caught their first frog. They didn’t do anything with the frogs besides look at them and hold them for a bit. Then they let them go.
After dinner we watched an episode of “Alone” and I contrasted their starvation with my gluttony. I’d have trouble making it through a day on “Alone.” Donut-less and without Sheri?! I’d tap out immediately.
Then we watched the fireflies light up. I used to catch these in jars when I was a kid and visiting grandparents in Illinois. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in Colorado.
Tuesday, July 12, 2022, Day 42:
Thunderous rain pelted our fly and lightning raged across the sky around midnight. I was glad to be snug and dry inside our tent. We’d anticipated the storm and had most things stowed in the car. This was wise, as everything out was soaked, and puddles ruled the roads.
Today, we needed to get the oil changed in Jeepy and see if REI had my road bike parts and could fix my crank and shifter. The plan was for Sheri to head directly to the Jeep dealership and I’d meet her there, switch from my gravel bike to the road bike and ride to REI. Then we’d meet up for a lazy, late breakfast and hope that both stops would be successful.
It’s been great but we are both ready for a new state. Pretty nice riding today with the exception of the time in Ann Arbor. But it was well spent as the REI shop had the part and replaced my crank and got my shifter working again.
Rode the gravel bike for the first 36 miles and then the road bike for the last 44 miles. We had to do an extra 9 miles when our first campground was a bust.
We continued to a KOA campground, expecting a bit more of a carnival atmosphere and were not disappointed. This campground had lots of kids and lots of places for them to play: multiple playgrounds, a soccer field, volleyball, basketball, a game room, a lake for swimming and a lake for fishing and paddleboats. It even had one of those giant, enclosed-tube slides that you see at water parks. None of this cost anything extra. This would have been a great place to go with a group of kids. It wasn’t bad for us either, as our site was well away from the action and even any other campers. Pure tent campers seem to be rare these days. I even took a dip in the lake. The lake was small and therefore not very cold. It was quite refreshing.
Wednesday, July 13, 2022, Day 43: Oh, Hi, Ohio
Riding through Toledo was the first real urban area I’d seen since a brief stretch in Seattle. It was gritty, with bumpy, poorly maintained roads, but it was interesting and the traffic wasn’t too bad and was giving me good space. I got on a bike path here, but it was short lived.
On the other side of Toledo I rode a two-lane highway, which wasn’t great, but the further I got out of town the less traffic I saw. Sheri ran into some traffic issues, so she was behind me and was going to be a bit late to our first planned meeting. I stopped and searched for a coffee place and found one right on my route: Ignite Coffee. I went there, ordered a coffee and hung out waiting for Sheri. When she arrived I had first lunch.
I rode on a great paved bike path. After 57 miles I met Sheri in a park and she brought me an Arby’s sandwich and some fries. It really hit the spot.
The trail turned to dirt, but it was firm and no problem, though more exposed to sun and I got a bit warm.
Sheri got us a site at the exact polar opposite of the KOA the night before. Then she rode back towards me, reaching me 3.6 miles from camp. We rode together back to camp and then Sheri rode eastward, on the trail, a bit further until the threat of rain convinced her to turn back. She arrived at the campsite about five minutes before it started to rain.
So, our campground. Here’s what I think happened. This lady, young for a great grandmother, has a couple of acres of land. She maybe did something with it in her younger years but then nothing. At least until the new bike trail went right by her land. She thinks, “I’ll start a campground for all the cyclists coming by!” A campground is way easier than a motel, as there is hardly anything to build. But campers expect some things, like a bathroom, which will have to be cleaned and maintained (actually, we found a number of campgrounds where the managers seem to think this wasn’t necessary). “No problem,” she thinks, “I’ll just get a Port-o-Potty and the company will be responsible for managing it." Cyclists also like to shower. That’s a tougher nut to crack, but she has a great idea to just put a shower head on the outside of an existing maintenance shed. She had a little fence build around it, puts down some gravel and flagstone. Voila! Instant shower with absolutely nothing to clean!
Showering outside sounds great. I love it. But there is just one problem with it. What if you want to shower when it’s raining? What do you do after you turn off the shower? She built no roof or even an overhang around the shower. Do you dry with your towel, now wet from the rain, and put on your wet clothes? Yes. Yes, I did. It kept my shower short, which was not a plus.
Since it was raining, we decided to go into town, ten miles away. It beat sitting in the car or the tent. I searched for a coffee shop where we could hang out and found: Sheri’s Coffee Shop. It was even spelled right. We had to visit even though it was closing soon. We had a vanilla latte and I asked where was a good place to eat. The barista mentioned Bob Evans. I asked, “What’s that? Who’s that?” He smiled at me like I was a turnip that just fell off the truck (isn’t that an expression used around here? Somewhere? Sometime?). I quickly said, “I’m not from around here.”
“I gathered that,” he said. “It’s comfort food.”
That sounded good to me, but I didn’t want a fast food restaurant. I wanted a place to hang out a bit. I asked, “Do you order standing up or sitting down at this restaurant?” He answered “sitting down,” and we headed there. It was great. Fast, friendly service with reasonable prices and good, “comfort” food. Sheri got a salad and I had roasted chicken, corn, and mashed potatoes. Yum.
Thursday, July 14, 2022, Day 44:
I rolled out the next morning and rode the trail until it ended on quiet country roads. After 14 miles, I turned east onto a quiet 2-lane highway and saw a sign that said nine miles to Lagrange. I immediately thought, “I bet they have a lot of nice girls there.” I hadn’t been listening to anything, but now I couldn’t resist. I found the Texas trio, dialed up the song, and cranked it. Life is good.
I met Sheri first at LaGrange park. Then we met again at a baseball field near Bath, and then another meetup at a high school near Stow. It is always great to see Sheri so often, as it breaks up my ride and gives me something to look forward to. With such frequent breaks, it doesn’t seem like I’m riding that far. I rode lots of great trails and paths.
When I wasn’t on the trails, I was on quiet roads, going by small-town America. In the last few days I feel that 50% of the time I’m riding by houses. Lots of these little towns have great, huge, well-maintained parks.
Super nice, though very large, campground at West Branch State Park Campground. Our site was huge and completely isolated from adjacent sites. The only other site we could see was across our road. We had nice grass all around our asphalt parking spot and all of that surrounded by dense woods. Nearby was a nice shower and fresh water nearly at our site.
The only drawback was no wifi and limited cell connection, though it was sufficient for me to do my research for my Camera piece, which was due the next morning. I felt really tired for some reason and I lay down in the tent to do my research.
Sheri did a load of laundry, which was a pain in the butt due to a broken washer (thank you, Sheri!), and then she went for a run/hike around the campground and the lake.
I had great weather today. In 44 days in this trip (so far) we’ve had just three days above 80 degrees and zero days above 90. I feel very lucky about that.
We are counting the days now before we finish. We are under 400 miles and will be there in less than a week. It’s been a great journey but also a long one. We’re ready to finish it off, see D.C. and head for home.
Friday, July 15, 2022, Day 45: West Virginia, Mountain Mama
Take me home, country roads. That’s what I was thinking. I miss John Denver. Brilliant songwriter.
West Virginia is the second fattest state in the nation. We noticed. It’s also the least flat state, meaning the most mountainous. I’m not sure how that is measured, but my buddy David The Sometimes Swiss assures me this is true. I guess it is appropriate that the University of West Virginia mascot is The Mountaineers. The Mountaineers, which may sound hilarious to us Coloradans, but the steepest roads of this entire ride were in this state.
Rode backroads and bike paths for the first 44 miles. Then we took a 90-minute break in Lisbon— a cute, little town. We were at the small park in the town quad. It would have been perfect if not for all the big trucks running through the center of the town. They need a truck bypass. We also finished my bi-weekly piece for the Daily Camera.
I then rode 20 miles to Chester, West Virginia for another break. I went across a cool, ancient, suspension bridge.
The last 14 miles were adventurous. Constant hills and I even continued on through a closed section of the highway that was barricaded to cars in multiple places.
I finished with a very steep one-mile climb to the campground in…Pennsylvania!
Today was a good test. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to climb a proper hill on a bike after 3500 miles of relative flats, but today, climb I did. True, my pace was glacial, but I did make it up without walking. The hills weren’t long, but some were extremely steep.
Saturday, July 16, 2022, Day 46:
This morning the Atlantic Ocean was 335 miles away. We figured it could be done in four days of riding, so that was the plan. Sheri found us another campground about 80 miles away. The impediment was the rain, which started around 7 a.m. I decided to wait a couple of hours to let the storm mainly pass us by. I didn’t start rolling until 9:30 a.m.
The route ahead looked very hilly. It was going to be up and down all day, much like the previous day, only even hillier. That was fine with me, though it would slow my pace quite a bit. I just needed to chip away at the miles a little bit at a time.
I picked up the Montour Trail outside of Pittsburgh and rode that until it dumped me onto streets. I followed signs to the Three Rivers Trail but found that to be just a wide shoulder along an industrial road with lots of debris. It wasn’t very pleasant.
Sheri picked out a park that we thought was along my route and it was close, but 300 feet above my route! It provides an incredible view of downtown Pittsburgh but proved quite the grunt to get up there. This was after 34 miles and I took a break here to eat first lunch.
After a rest, I rode back down the hill and through some industrial areas to get onto the Great Allegheny Passage (aka the GAP trail). I was riding right along the Monongahela River now. This is one of the “Three Rivers.” The Monongahela and the Allegheny River join to form the Ohio River. This path was really nice with lots of views along the way. It passed by some restaurants and had lots of signs describing the steel-producing history of Pittsburgh (the football team isn’t called the Steelers for nothing). With my late start, I wasn’t able to stop and read all these signs. That hurt, as I like doing this a lot, but I had a long way to go.
I should have stayed on this trail and I’m not even sure where it continued when I left it, but I was blindly following Google’s route to D.C. I met Sheri in Irwin City Park and I was drained. The road surface was so bad and the two-lane, shoulder-less road had tons of traffic. The road had the look of it that you’d expect little traffic…except there was tons of traffic. Maybe there is just so many people out here and all of them had places to go and people to see. It was Saturday, after all.
Sheri suggested some alternative stopping locations, including right in Irwin. Physically, I felt fine and we decided to continue to New Stanton, only ten miles away. From there it would be just 17 more miles to our planned destination in Donegal, at a campground.
The riding to New Stanton went fine. The road surface got a lot better, a small shoulder appeared and the traffic seemed less. I just had a quick drink here and continued on. What was in front of me was the biggest, steepest hill of the entire ride. I was in my lowest gear, spinning away on a shoulder with lots of gravel, going up a relentless hill on a four-lane highway. This hill was considerably steeper than Flagstaff. Not Super-Flag steep, mind you, but really steep. It wasn’t as twisty as Flagstaff, but it was probably the steepest hill I’ve ever seen with a four-lane highway going up it. I suffered. I nearly had to stop and I never stop while climbing a hill.
I got to camp about 5:30 p.m. I’d ridden 85 miles and just under 5000 vertical feet — the most climbing of any day of the trip. I wasn’t wasted, but I was beat. I drank a chocolate milk and had some meat and cheese, and then took a shower. It was nearly 7 p.m. when I started dinner, which was just canned Spaghetti O’s. That might turn some people’s stomachs, but at the time, it tasted great and took little effort to make. I just heated it on my stove.
After dinner, Sheri went for her usual exploratory walk. I just rested. The campground manager, Dan, came by to get us registered and to collect payment. He’d been out riding on the GAP trail when we checked in. A super nice guy, he gave me some good information on the best way to get back on the GAP trail. He even drove back up to our site later with a couple of maps for the trail.
I should have stayed on this trail from Pittsburgh, but I didn’t know about it and Google routed me this direction. I just didn’t do enough research. Our route will end up being nearly 3800 miles and I just got route fatigue, falling back on Google to create my route. Oh well. My laziness caused me to partially miss out on the best route. That’s okay. Especially since I can’t change the past.
We think we could finish in three days, though it might be four if weather continues to be an issue.
Sunday, July 17, 2022, Day 47:
The rain started before 6 a.m. and was a downpour by 6:15. I got soaked making the coffee, but it was delivered to my sweetie in the tent on schedule. I hung out in the car, waiting out the rain for the second consecutive morning. The weather and roads were conspiring to make this a tough finish for me.
To get the most of the trail I’d ride to Ohiopyle (that’s a funny name), but it would then take me 62 miles to get to Meyersdale instead of 35 going the direct way. I decided to compromise and head for Rockwood, 25 miles away. I’d get on the GAP there and ride it for 13 miles to Meyersdale, where I’d meet Sheri.
The highest point in Pennsylvania is Mt. Davis and it was only 10 miles off our route, so we did a little side trip to bag it. This was another highpoint that we could practically drive to, so we did. We met at a gas station in Meyersdale and I put the road bike in the car for the ten-mile drive to the trailhead, eating lunch on the way.
We ended up hiking about three miles to get to the high point, climb the tower on the summit, and then try to get to the LiDAR high point that Homie had told me about. We hiked up a gravel road to get within a hundred meters or so, but the forest was impenetrable. We turned back.
We drove back to Meyersdale and spent some time in the historical museum at the trailhead. We walked through a caboose and viewed three running model train setups. One was the Lionel-gauge railroad that my dad had and one was HO-scale — the size that I had as a kid. It really brought me back to those times of playing with model trains. I then kitted up and got back on the bike. I had 32 miles left to ride on the GAP trail to Cumberland. The weather forecast did not look great. I was hoping to make it before the rain started, but I carried my rain shell.
I was feeling a bit tired and just soft pedaled, listening to my lectures on science fiction and on how to write fiction. I’m not sure I will ever write fiction, but if I do, I’ll have been trained up. Heck, some people view my trip reports as fictional, so maybe this course will help me polish them up a bit.
I caught up to a couple riding with panniers and I chatted them up. Lawrence and Louise, who were biking to Washington D.C. from Pittsburgh. We were on the GAP now, but the trail changed to the C&O Canal Towpath at Cumberland (where George Washington took control of the then British regiment fighting the native Americans). They told me that the C&O is a lot rougher, muddier, and grassier. Clearly, this wasn’t their first time riding this trail. They enjoyed it so much that they came back to do it again. The C&O becomes single track for sections. Lawrence asked if I had fenders with me because, if I did not, I’d get covered in mud. Oh well. Muddy I will be.
I pedaled on at a bit faster pace and a few miles later the rain started. I still had 25 miles to go. I pulled on my rain shell and continued. At first it was light rain and no big deal, but it steadily built to a downpour. I was gaining on a rider in front of me and I caught him in a long tunnel. We stopped at the far side to wait out the rain. It was raining so hard that I knew it couldn’t last at that intensity.
Chad lived in Frostburg, the next town on the trail and only three miles ahead. Chad was 82 years old and still skied and rode his bike regularly. In fact, he was still working for the state, helping seniors to re-enter the work force. He’s been widowed for 15 years. He said that he used to look forward to the weekends to spend time with his wife, but now he looks forward to Monday so that he gets to go to work and interact with others. He’s not lonely, though, as his daughter and son live nearby.
When the rain came nearly to a stop, we continued on. He told me about the steam locomotive that runs from Frostburg to Cumberland on the weekends. It is supposedly the biggest steam locomotive east of the Mississippi. He told me about George Washington and his activity in fighting the Native Americans out of Cumberland. At Frostburg, we shook hands and said goodbye. I had 16 miles left to ride.
It wasn’t long before the rain started again for me. I picked up the pace to limit my time in it, but soon it was raining as hard as ever. Despite my shell, I got soaked to the skin. I couldn’t have been wetter if I had jumped into a pool. With eight miles to go I entered another tunnel and stopped at the far side to wait out the worst of it, yet again. I texted with Sheri here and she told me that it was raining hard in Cumberland as well.
It wasn’t cold out, but standing in the dark tunnel, soaking wet, wasn’t comfortable. When the rain eased just a bit, I decided to just ride on. I couldn’t get any wetter and the sooner I got to Cumberland, where Sheri had checked into a hotel, the sooner I’d get into that hot shower. So, I pushed on into the rain.
It was actually sort of fun, riding in such a deluge. I put on some tunes to pump myself up and started really moving. The path ran right next to the little-used tracks and would occasionally cross to the other side. At each crossing I took care not to slip and fall over. As long as I kept the rubber side down, the riding was fun. I even shot some photos and videos while riding.
I found the hotel, the Fairfield, directly adjacent to the trail, and entered the lobby, soaked, with my soaked dirt bike. The clerk at the desk didn’t bat an eye and just asked, “How are you?” I said, “I’m soaked.”
Sheri met me at the room (she had been in the workout room), and I proceeded to strip off my cold, wet clothing and jump into a hot shower. It felt so good. Sheri started some laundry, as both of my kits were now dirty. Then she went and got us some pizza and a salad for dinner. We ended the day by talking to my dad and then with Derek, before finishing an episode of “Alone.”
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