Data: 147.5 miles Riding time 8:15 (17.8 mph avg)
Covered bridges, root beer floats, Erie, Pennsylvania homes and harbor, Lake Erie shoreline, and big tailwinds for half the ride. It was yet another unforgettable bike ride. The published distance today was 138 miles, so I see I "detoured" a total of 9.5 miles to sight see. The last few days I've mostly ridden alone, which I have found I prefer on these beautiful country roads with little car traffic. It's just so peaceful and I can get lost in my thoughts as I observe all the minutia around me, like landscaping, flowers, people working, animals, whatever.
The early part of today's ride was not too different from yesterday, which was still really beautiful. Note: Many huge corn fields in Ohio have had single oil wells right out in the middle, pumping away all by themselves. ???
Once we turned north along a particular road that paralleled the Pennsylvania border, I saw different sorts of farms and dwellings than we'd seen in Ohio up to now. Interspersed with the "nicer" homes and farms were many older, run-down homes, trailers, old trailers, groups of old trailers, non-similar trailers combined together to make a larger trailer, and old shacks. Many had lots of old, broken-down cars on their lots, and other "antiques" lying all over the place. Goats and chickens were roaming. I'm sure these scenes are all over, but we just never came across them until today. Here is a tractor I passed on the road.
Also interspersed along this road were Amish farms. An interesting note: I saw an Amish woman in her full black dress mowing her lawn with a push mower. Quite a difference from all the riding mowers I've been seeing. Actually, it's not uncommon at all to see women doing hard physical farm work, like cutting logs with a chain saw, that I would normally associate with men's work.
Another note from all of Ohio: lots of flag poles to show patriotism, and most had a secondary flag for their favorite sports team - Ohio State, Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Browns, and other colleges besides OSU.
The road north also had three covered bridges that I could see off to the east a couple hundred yards. I diverted off our route to visit this perfect specimen.
Once we got almost to Lake Erie, we turned east toward the Penn. border. But before we got there, we came to an old fashioned root beer stand that the tour leader had said was a "must stop". Sure enough, our group was sitting at every stool ordering floats and hot dogs. I had a float. Kasper kept feeding quarters into the juke box in front of him, playing old 60s songs.
Not long after leaving White Turkey Drive-In with full bellies, we got to Pennsylvania.
Being a Saturday, we saw, for the first time on this trip, other groups of bikers on the road. Some were doing a regular ride along Lake Erie, while another group was doing the "Underground Railroad" course from Alabama to a spot in central Ontario. They were camping, so they were really loaded down, as shown here in my photo of a guy named Alvin. I felt lucky that we could ride unencumbered.
In Erie, which has one of the few natural harbors along the southern Lake Erie coastline, I diverted from our route to ride a bike path through the harbor area and downtown.
The harbor was scenic, but so were the beautiful homes along 6th street. They reminded me of the homes in Quincy, IL.
The rest of the ride to Dunkirk was along the coast, about a quarter-mile inland from the shoreline. It reminded me of riding along the ocean since all you can see is water to the north (you can't see the northern shoreline - too far away). I was surprised to see so many vineyards; it turns out this has been a wine region for over 100 yrs. Some of the riders went in for some tasting at the Penn Shore Winery.
It was a three-state day, and here we are entering New York, our 11th state.
When we were getting close to Dunkirk, I went into a marina where there was a restoration-in-process of a late-16th-century sailing ship. It was built as an authentic replica in 1985, but it sank in 1999, and they raised it but need to finish restoring it.
I later diverted to ride around Erie Lake State Park, and in the end, I was the last rider in. But what a fabulous day. We had a yummy dinner in the hotel restaurant that overlooked the harbor. Guinness in the bottle, and Yingling on tap, were tonight's beer choices.
No comments:
Post a Comment