Day 99: Kingsville, NY

The day started out more pleasant than we have become accustomed to, so it wasn't long before we scuttled the idea of our planned day's ride of 40 miles to Erie, PA.

As we left Lake Erie State Park, Alea ran into a couple that I had invited to come stay on our campsite the night before.  They declined, and it turns out that they free-camped right outside of the park entrance.  We are headed the same way as they are, more or less, across Ohio (they are going to Michigan), but it's hard to say if we'll run into them again.  They were clearly doing more than our usual 40 mile days, but I'm not so sure they are likely to be doing the sort of mileage that we anticipate doing the next few days.

After deciding not to stay at Erie, PA, we first thought of riding to Lake Geneva State Park (about 15 miles farther down the road).  On Friday they showed several open sites for tonight, but today they were only listing five walk-up campsites (which were non-reservable, first come, first served).  Then we found out about the place where we are staying, Village Green Campground ($25, power, water, showers, and inexpensive laundry).  It's not much more than an RV parking lot, but the price is reasonable and the people that run the place are very friendly.

Found in Erie, PA...
sort of an appropriate theme for the Fourth of July weekend.

We covered a bit more than 80 miles today, with Alea riding the first 44 miles in the morning, and me taking over for the remaining 36 miles just after noon.  We followed fairly closely to the lakeshore most of the day, though it was rare that we got much more than a peek-a-boo view of Lake Erie.  Otherwise, the landscape was mostly rural residential in character.

The wind started out very fair - a light tail wind.  As the land mass inland started heating up, it sucked cold air in off of the lake, so by mid-morning there was a side wind that slowly increased in intensity as the day wore on.

The terrain has flattened out considerably.  Once in a while there are some low rollers, but mostly the roads are flat and fairly straight.  I suspect much of what we will encounter from here to Illinois will seem very much like what we experienced today.  

Ohio makes the sixteenth state that we've bicycled through this year.  If my calculations are correct, that makes 32 different states where we've pedaled in the past 11+ months.  We'll add Indiana to that list by the end of this week.  After that, we will be revisiting states that we traveled through last fall.  So we won't add to the total count again until we arrive in Texas in late September or early October.