Alea and I originally planned to share the mileage today, figuring it would be a long day in crappy weather. But it was about 65 degrees when I started riding this morning, and the high was at least in the mid-70s. So I was feeling GOOD today, and ended up doing all the miles.
There were plenty of 9% grades to deal with throughout the day, but the overall trend was that we were losing altitude. It is road construction season, and we ran into our first torn-up roads. Fortunately, they had just got them torn down to bare dirt and hadn't started adding new gravel, so they were easy enough to navigate.
We ran into a few folks doing short tours in the Green Mountains, one of whom warned us about some road construction on our route. They were told by a few people that cars going through that area were having flat tires. We are hoping that will have been remedied by the time we get there, as we were planning on staying at a USFS campground along that road.
In Sharon, VT we ran into Peter, who is cycling solo from Maine to Sacramento. We've invited him to camp with us at Silver Lake State Park ($22, primitive, + $1 for Lana, 50 cent hot showers that last 5 minutes), but thus far he hasn't caught up to us. He told us that he camped in a cemetery last night and had been riding since 5 AM. We offered to ferry him and his bike over to the park, but he declined. He may end up regretting that decision, as there is plenty of wind and hills between here and where we left him.
We had hoped to camp near South Royalton, but both campgrounds near there recently closed permanently. So I rode another 8 miles down the road, then we loaded up the bike and drove about another 8 miles south of our route to the campground. I rode just shy of 67 miles today and am not feeling totally wiped out.
No comments:
Post a Comment