8/1/19
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| Mileage: 86.52 Climbing: 3,747 ft Travel Time: 7:50:31 |
After a highly oversold hot breakfast, we hit the road, starting with an incredibly busy and truck-filled highway that quickly turned onto a country lane. As we were passing three different polymer factories, we could have sworn we could smell baking bread, and were relieved (and surprised) to pass a bread factory some miles down the road. We took a gravel road along a reservoir and nature preserve and saw a fossil fuel plant in Cumberland City (and not much else except for boarded up store fronts). Three of us have developed folliculitis, mom and I on our bottoms, and David on the back of his knees, so we stopped at a local pharmacy and I used my magical prescribing skills to acquire some extra strength benzoyl peroxide. Now all we have to do is strike the right balance between treating the zits and overly drying our skin and causing more chafing.
We finally made it to the Tennessee Trace, which is similar to the Natchez Trace in that it was minimally trafficked, lined with trees and sites of historical interest. And in this case, bison!
Unfortunately, the road to Gatlin was closed, and anyway, we found out at the Welcome Center that Gatlin camp did not have any potable water, so we trekked a further 20-odd miles to Wranglers camp (no permit needed, $12 per tent in the basic tent, lots of horses!), and got there just as the sun was setting.
Earworm: Wagon Wheel and Tennessee Stud
8/2/19
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| Mileage: 81.79 Climbing: 3,930 ft Travel Time: 7:31:09 |
We left the Trace and its wonders behind after a morning of constant hills. We crossed the Cumberland River into Grand River, where we failed to find handlebar tape but succeeded in buying electrolytes at a local bike shop. We then took the back way to Smithland, which was as beautiful as it was hilly. We discovered that Dom’s tires were not tubeless when he got a flat, and we limped into town by inflating his rear wheel over and over again because we were so desperate to get to lunch. Our overdue lunch was at a drive-in family-owned burger joint that was everything we needed and then some. Once the heat had somewhat improved, we hopped back on the bike, and barely made it on a ferry to Illinois by sunset. We rolled into camp after dark, so it’s a good thing that we have our unpacking routine down to a well-oiled process.
Earworm: Country Road
8/3/19
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| Mileage: 65.73 Climbing: 2,428 ft Travel Time: 6:20:47 |
Once we broke camp, we visited the cave for which Cave-In-Rock camp is named. It’s a cave in a rock, as its name suggests, with an exciting history that may have involved pirates, and it’s beautiful. We had a delicious and cheap breakfast at Rose’s Kountry House (bikers welcome!), before making it onto the ferry. After two excruciating hills, we had a relatively easy day of slow rolling hills through miles of farmland, interrupted by donuts in Sturgis, lunch at an Italian restaurant in Morganfield, and BBQ, and beer and bluegrass at the Henderson Brewing Company. At one point the self-appointed mayor of Henderson interrupted the band so that all of us could take a picture with them, and as if that weren't embarrassing enough, the lady holding the camera didn't even take a picture, so it was all for naught. Our initial destination, the John James Audobon Camp was closed because of nearby construction, so we stayed at a motel. As we were pulling into the parking lot, David noticed that Dom's wheel was wobbling, which is how we learned that he had broken a spoke. This would become a recurring theme over the next few days, and define much of the trail for us.
Earworm: Wild Horses
8/4/19
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| Mileage: 75.36 Climbing: 1,647 ft Travel Time: 6:38:55 |
Happy birthday Sarah! We woke up bright and early to perform a dorky birthday song for Sarah, who is enjoying the delights of Italy. We hit the road with the idea of getting to Owensboro in time for the bike shop to open to fix Dom’s spoke, but when we got there, the bike shop didn’t have a technician over the weekend, so instead we shopped at Krogers, buying enough food to last an army a week, that is to say, lunch, which we enjoyed in a nearby park. The whole day was incredibly flat and beautiful with even a moment of the mythical tail wind to speed us along to Vastwood Park near Hawesville.
8/5/19
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| Mileage: 88.80 Climbing: 3,878 ft Travel Time: 6:22:05 |
Dom’s rear wheel was starting to wobble noticeably, and we were worried about further spoke breakage, so the intrepid David sped ahead on the road to Clarkesville at a whopping 14mph over hills and mountains, while the three of us fished old pizza boxes out of a dumpster and used them as signs to hitchhike to Clarksville. They must have been some really great signs (or else my booty chamois is more scandalous than I thought), because within the hour, we had a ride to the very door of the bike repair shop. Southern hospitality strikes again, and he wouldn’t even let us chip in for gas. While waiting for the spoke repair, we went to Jersey’s Café, the weirdest hole-in-the-wall bar cum restaurant hidden behind a strip mall, with indoor smoking and delicious burgers. David made it to the campsite only a few hours after us, and he thinks he would have beat us if he hadn’t stopped for a milkshake in Corydon.
8/6/19
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| Mileage: 70.99 Climbing: 1,883 ft Travel Time: 6:03:12 |
If the fourth wheel were still riding with us, he would have given a shout-out to the Ohio River bike trail, which crested the levee along the Ohio River, although it ended far too soon. Our plan was to go to the Clifty Campground in Madison, but we made it there by lunch and still had plenty of energy. We had lunch at the Off-Broadway brew pub (where we weren’t allowed to bring in our water bottles because of their open container laws) and watched a rainstorm happen through the restaurant windows. Everyone (and a thousand orange signs) informed us that the river road ahead was under construction, however, the alternative was a long hilly ridge road, and we know from experience that bicycles are able to bypass most construction zones. This zone was no exception, and we zipped through with no problems aside from getting far muddier than anticipated. We rolled into Vevay, the birthplace of American viticulture and checked into Indiana’s most historic inn, which was as beautiful as it sounds.
Earworm: Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
8/7/19
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| Mileage: 61.02 Climbing: 2,083 ft Travel Time: 5:12:53 |
After a not-so-early breakfast at AJ’s (where everybody knows your name), we went off route. We had decided to omit a very long and circuitous part of the trail and instead cut northward to Winton Campground. The morning was spent on the beautiful rolling countryside roads that we’ve come to expect, with a Dearborn county bike trail that connected Aurora to Laurenceburg that was absolutely beautiful and fortuitously ended right in front of a milkshake shop. After a prolonged lunch break in the shade of an abandoned school yard, we struggled with poorly maintained roads and rush-hour traffic and were thrilled to finally pull into the green rolling hills of Winton Park.
8/8/19
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| Mileage: 66.39 Climbing: 1,247 ft Travel Time: 5:25:38 |
We found out that David had never been to a Waffle House (a Southern staple), so we “surprised” him by taking him there for breakfast. It was about as delicious as Waffle House ever is. The highways were poorly paved, but when we got back on the Underground Railroad at Loveland, we turned onto a bike path that was silky smooth and gorgeous. Once Dom had gotten his spoke fixed, we got going and didn’t stop till the fairgrounds in Xenia. We made it almost in time to not get soaked by the rain.
Earworm: Summer in Ohio
8/9/19
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| Mileage: 80.36 Climbing: 971 ft Travel Time: 6:23:44 |
The bike shop didn’t open till 10am, so we lazed around the campsite till our tents were dry, then moseyed into town to hang out at a coffee shop until Dom could get his spoke repaired. It was after this late start that we realized that there were no campgrounds in the two towns within biking distance of us, so we girded our loins and pedaled a whopping 50 miles after lunch to arrive in Delaware, home of Ohio Wesleyan. We made excellent time, and we rewarded ourselves with a nice meal and brew at Old Dog Brewpub.
8/10/19
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| Mileage: 63.79 Climbing: 1,919 ft Travel Time: 5:14:19 |
We woke up late, and incredibly refreshed, only to find over breakfast that we had underestimated the distance we had to cover today, 61 rather than 45 miles. But that was no problem for pros like us. We had planned to stop in Sparta, but the convenience store listed there had closed years ago, so instead we cleaned up the last of our rations in some shade by the side of the highway. Instead we lunched at Butler, which was delicious, although our meal was interrupted by a very loud high-speed traffic collision. The people at the table next to us were also camping, but they were flying from campground to campground. We crested some mighty hills, passed the Miller Dam, and picked up a 6-pack at the Mifflin convenience store before we landed at a campsite on a lake. It was bittersweet (and very cold), knowing that this was our last night on the road.
Earworm: Mama Who Bore Me
8/11/19
Our last day on the road! We dragged our feet packing up in the morning, because no one really wanted the trip to end. I threw away one of my chamois, that had an enormous hole on the left butt cheek, and in fact, I decided to go chamois-less, to see how my bottom would do without padding (it turns out it did fine, and I'm now officially a convert to the non-padded chamois faction). Although the 89 is practically a straight shot from Mifflin to Oberlin, we elected to stick to the Underground Railroad and head due east before heading north, even though it added a full 14 miles to the journey. We stopped for our first break in the middle of Amish country, and had lunch in Wellington. Then it was a scant 10 miles to Oberlin, on increasingly familiar country roads, until at last we turned onto the Oberlin bike trail and home.
8/11/19
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| Mileage: 54.94 Climbing: 1,722 ft Travel Time: 4:17:38 |
Our last day on the road! We dragged our feet packing up in the morning, because no one really wanted the trip to end. I threw away one of my chamois, that had an enormous hole on the left butt cheek, and in fact, I decided to go chamois-less, to see how my bottom would do without padding (it turns out it did fine, and I'm now officially a convert to the non-padded chamois faction). Although the 89 is practically a straight shot from Mifflin to Oberlin, we elected to stick to the Underground Railroad and head due east before heading north, even though it added a full 14 miles to the journey. We stopped for our first break in the middle of Amish country, and had lunch in Wellington. Then it was a scant 10 miles to Oberlin, on increasingly familiar country roads, until at last we turned onto the Oberlin bike trail and home.
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