At the end of our last post, we were wilting in the heat due to late ride starts. Day Four was an opportunity for us to begin early and end early. In order to do so, we left on our ride at least an hour before the group and made our rest stops short and sweet. This was a beautiful ride and we thoroughly enjoyed the day on our own schedule.

To give you the weather stats, when we started at 8:25am it was already 82 degrees. The high for the day was 91 and when we finished our ride at noon it was 89 degrees with some threatening clouds in the area. This ride featured some climbing, and some sweet descents. It also had some lovely shady parts. The highlight was the Bridge of Dreams. It’s the third longest (at 370 feet) covered bridge in the country.

About five miles later, we were splitting a BLTA (Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, Avocado) for lunch. Two miles later, we stored our bike in the Millersburg Hotel and made our way to the Millersburg Brewery for a little “rehydration”. Evidently, the rest of the group got drenched twice in their last 10 miles. We stayed dry, but at least it brought the temps down for the evening.

Evening rain was a big help in dropping the temps for day five. When we set out at 8am for the longest day of the trip, it was “only” 75 degrees.

Millersburg to Akron was definitely the hardest ride of the week. There was a good bit of riding on the road through Amish Country where there are rolling hills – lots of up and down.

This was also a day with 18 miles of unpaved (but very hard packed limestone) tow paths. The tow paths run between the river and the Ohio And Erie canal and were used for about 30 years. Horses actually towed the barges through the canals. The advent of rail travel in the 1860’s made the canals obsolete, only to be resurrected over 100 years later for our recreational pleasure.

Dinner featured sticky ribs with cornbread and a huge piece of fried chicken with a quinoa salad. The ribs dish was gorgeous, but I think we are drawing the line on ordering ribs north of the Mason-Dixon line. Two ribs were perfect, but the rest were dry. That fried chicken breast was very impressive, though.

By the last day of riding, the heat dome had been vanquished by the rain and our approach to Lake Erie. When the ride started around 8:30am, it was a mere 75 degrees. Had we started a bit earlier we may have made it to the end of the road without getting drenched! We had 3 or 4 miles to go when the skies opened up. We took shelter under a bridge, and then enjoyed the much cooler temps as we finished up.

A draw bridge was up and much of the group waited together to finish.

We have ridden across Georgia 17 times. On our cross-country trip in 2017, we rode across California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana and Florida. Now we can add Ohio to our cross-state list. Mission accomplished!

Later in the summer we will pack up the minivan and head north in search of cooler weather. See ya then!