IGotABike

Another awesome day! We are truly blessed, but we have truly been tried. Today we road from Muncie Indiana all the way to this little campground, The Lazy R, in Bradford Ohio, just a touch west of Piqua. Our entire route today was ON ROAD! Somewhere around 65 miles of road riding. It was awe inspiring and humbling at the same time. My wrists feel like numb linguine.
The roads we were on we’re so beautiful. You can fully appreciate God’s bounty on this land. It is mile after mile of corn and then more corn and then some soy beans thrown in for variation. We live in abundance and among good people.
So our day started along some pretty intense roadways

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Ongoing the way we stopped for Elevensies at an abandoned home and ate our left over Chinese food from the night before.

We were fighting the wind again all day. One of the places we took a break was at the gates of an old orphanage built in 1888.

It was pretty windy.

We rode in to Winchester an had lunch. It was an historic town. I took a nap in my chair after lunch. Here’s a few pics….

We rode route 502 for-ever. Corn, corn, corn. I loved it like the Fourth of July.

Eventually we made it back to our beautiful Ohio!

We rode through Greenville, the home of Annie Oakley.

After Annie, we had some more seriously grueling traffic and uncomfortable writ-numbing miles until we reach the Lazy R!

Oh yeah-along the way, we stopped at Krogers and Carolyn is now grilling our steaks

We are feeling great and are excited about road riding across Indiana. We will head east on Rt 32 towards Winchester and head south to Greenville to get Rt 36. Our target is Lazy R Campground southwest of Bradford Ohio. Here we go!

Today was another great day. We covered over 50 miles and are up to about 650 miles total. We woke up early and I got our kettle fire started on the first match. Awesome. Lots of coffee and oatmeal. Then it started to rain. We checked the radar and decided we could outrun it. By the time we rode from the campground back to the trail it was raining harder. We donned our rain gear and pressed on.

our rain gear works well and we were rather comfortable. Call us crazy, but sometimes it’s fun riding in the rain. Carolyn’s home made chinese carry out styrofoam fender worked well.

There are few places to rest under shelter along the Cardinal Greenway. We took a nice long break to dry out under a hi way bridge.

This trail is really beautiful, but rather remote. It reminds us of the Ashtabula Greenway trail in that respect.

We stopped at the trail headquarters, but they closed 10 minutes before we got there. Too bad, it looked like a fun place.

Tomorrow will be a lot of road riding and we are looking forward to it, except that it will be our big turn, towards home.

Our bikes are loaded and we are ready to pedal but it is raining, in Richmond. We are headed to Muncie where it is not raining. This is our last day pedaling away from home. Tomorrow we begin our journey back.

Perfection is fleeting, and it usually evaporates the moment it is perceived. That was not today.
Today we rode in the most idyllic of settings; open rolling farm roads and hi ways with light traffic and a slight tail wind. It went on for miles and was sublime. It was also occasionally interspersed with the incongruous, like airplanes crossing the road right in front of us.

We were just wheeling along, minding our own rhubarb, when all of a sudden this banana yellow airplanes taxis down his driveway, looks both ways, then cuts across the road in front of us to a teeny tiny little asphalt runway. He putt putts down to one end, spins around, guns it and is in the air in substantially less than 100 yards.
We peddled on.
We stopped in Lewisburg for Elevensies… Left over chicken wings from Sarahs (thanks Nathian!)

We also came across a cool back roads one lane covered bridge.

Don’t forget the Golden Rule of bicycle travel; don’t ever pass a liquor store, because it may be the last one of the day.

So here we are at the KOA Richmond Indiana,

A great little campground that, from the look of the wallpaper in the bathroom, time has passed by

Day 15 was a perfect zero day. We are rested and ready to pack up and pedal to Indiana! We are heading for Richmond. It’s about 25 miles. The back roads here are fabulous or we could use US 40.
The bottom of the Cardinal Trail is in Richmond and there are 3 campgrounds. There is a gorge that the trail passes through.
We might go further, about 40 more miles, to Summmit Lake State Park, just south of Muncie.
Should be exciting to find the way. Not only have we never been there on bicycles, we also have never been there by car. Here we go hoosiers!

Wow! What a couple of past days! We have exceeded ever expectation that we ever had of ourselves and have covered about 135 miles in two days! Most excellent. As a result, I am now hanging by the pool at our favorite KOA, Tall Timbers, enjoying the sunshine and listening to groovy old tunes – Elvis, Chicago, Smokey, The Archie’s… All the stuff we grew up listening to.
OK, now on to the rest of the story!
Sunday we left Irma’s in Cincinnati, headed for Morgans campground.

In downtown Cincy, we got caught up in a marathon.

We stopped in Loveland for lunch and some really delicious food and beer. Loveland was really hoppin’. I’ve never seen so many bikes outside of a bicycle shop!

We talked to anybody that would listen to us about our story and trail guide.

Eventually, we made it back to Morgans.

Monday we hit the road early and made really good time. We stopped in Silver Springs for Elevensies. We ate a a new place called Treana’s. Really good food and they sell some bike supplies. They will be in our trail guide update. silver Springs is really turning into a very bike-centric town.

When we arrived in Xenia, we were surprised to be tracked down by the legendary Mr. Gene Pass, wearing an IGotABike tee shirt, no less! Gene was pedaling with Danny & Yung and they racked up 100 miles that day, a first century ride for Danny & Yung!

Crossing the dam on Route 40 was exhilarating. We had an awesome view of the sun setting over the valley, all the while pedaling at nearly 20mph. It was spectacular!

We knew we were close to the KOA, but after a short stop for beer at Krogers, we arrived right at sundown, just after 9pm.

That brings us all the way to where we are now… Poolside

We are here. Arrived at sunset. Broke our record, pedaled 71 miles. Feeling great, living the dream. Details and cool photos to come!

Tall Timbers KOA in Brooklville, Ohio is one of our favorite places to go. If we can pedal there it will be a longest distance ever, about 75 miles. We have a plan B but we a going for it!
We have already had breakfast, Guy is doing the dishes (yay Guy)
Loading up and heading north to Xenia then west to Dayton. then the decision to go through Trotwood or Englewood???
The weather is more than perfect!

The river is high and muddy. The sky is dark and cloudy. We couldn’t be happier! We had a great day today, snapping off 54 miles like it was nothing (thanks to the giant steak dinner from sister Janet last night). We rode all the way from Monfort Heights Cincinnati to Morgans campground with a great pizza/beer/nap break in the middle. We met a lot of cool people too, including one young couple that we hopefully convinced to take the plunge and ride the whole trail!
Anyway, as I alluded to in the second sentence of this post, it looks like it wants to rain. There are some big, dark, scary clouds, so we got the same cabin that we had last week. Our little tent isn’t really suited for anything more than a shower. When we get back, I’d like to sell our 4 season Moss tent and get something more appropriate for our style of camping now days. Big Agnes has my attention recently. As Carol mentioned in another post, we bought two of their sleeping pads, and so far after three nights, they are a big thumbs up. I will do a formal review after we use them a little more.

Carolyn, figuring out tomorrow’s route.