Week 11 Highlights & Route Overview

Weekly Miles: 335

Total Miles: 3,124

Weekly Elevation: 7,452

Total Elevation: 84,115

Highlights: We are already done with Indiana. That was quick! Bliss did something different and contacted a facebook group in a small town where we wanted to stay. We got permission to camp on the backside of the county fairgrounds in Montpelier Ohio. It was nice to camp on soft grass for a change. At 12:30 am Robert was awoken by a noise, then heard a man yell and curse loudly. Robert became very alert in case there was danger. He heard the man trying to start a motor, like on a mini bike or something. After a few tries it started, and the man rode off with one last loud F-word. Robert listened for a minute, then went out to check around. All seemed fine so after calming his nerves he was able to go back to sleep. Luckily, Bliss was able to sleep through it all, because she would not have been able to go back to sleep after that. 

We had a few more people ride with us this week. Nancy had been chatting with Bliss on facebook, and lives moderately close to our route. They arranged to meet up on the Wabash Cannonball trail and Nancy rode with us for about 10 miles and took us to lunch in Maumee. She is very tall and athletic, and we had to pick up the pace to match her. A little tiring, but fun. 

We had a couple more people that were on  a shorter tour ride with us for a while and chatted about our trip. 

We stayed near Cleveland for a rest day with Bobbi and Mark, in their beautiful 1900’s home. Had some great talks about family, religion, and politics. We really aligned well with them. The warmshowers website has been down for about 2 weeks, and just came back online the day before. Luckily Bobbi saw our message and we were able to stay here. We were able to go to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, ride over a swinging and an elevator bridge, and hung out on a beach at Lake Erie. 

To get to Cleveland faster we rode 65 and 70 mile days back to back. Way too much. We’re just riding to get places and it’s not always that enjoyable. So we sat down together and went through the remaining couple weeks, to make sure we don’t have any killer long days and that we can enjoy the rides. 

Leaving Cleveland we stopped at Brandywine Falls, had a long break by the falls and relaxed a little. Later that day we went to the May 4 visitor center at Kent State University. Robert was 8 in 1970, and remembers that he had strong emotions seeing news reports on the Viet Nam war, and the Kent State shootings. So this monument touched him very deeply. The division that existed in this country is very disturbing, and in many ways it is still that way today.

Lastly, this week we were like celebrities, with multiple people asking us to stay with them, and getting a police escort into and out of town. See previous blog post.

Route Overview:

We started out on farm roads for about 10 miles, with a couple short gravel roads. Then before a larger section of gravel roads we detoured up to US 20 through Angola Indiana, across the Ohio border, and then side roads down to Montpelier Ohio. We rode Co Roads K and F to Wauseon where we picked up the Wabash Cannonball trail. We went through Maumee and maneuvered down to Perrysburg. We took a very convoluted route to avoid busy roads and industrial areas to Genoa where we picked up the North Coast Inland Trail (NCIT) and cycle route 30 into Bellevue. We continued on the NCIT to Elyria, then Chestnut Ridge, Bradley, Hilliard, and Madison into West Cleveland. Took some side roads out of Cleveland to the Ohio & Erie Canal towpath trail and the Metro parks trail to Brandywine Falls and then Kent. 

Took side roads and Co Hwy 18 to Lake Milton, then county roads and the Mill Creek Metro Bikeway to Leetonia.