Searching for a home

August 6, 2021

Today’s ride was projected to be a 55 mile and was a mystery ride. The mystery was where we are going to stay at the end of the ride. It is Friday night and there are no openings in any campgrounds. The hotels do not appear to have any rooms available either. We decided to ride to Geneva-on-the-lake, which is a 55 mile ride, and figure out where to stay when we get there.

As we rode out of town we went past the downtown airport. There were two jets mounted and one was a Blue Angels Jet. The next section followed the shore and went past some really really nice homes. We went through the neighborhood where the old Cleveland rich lived. These were not homes they were mansions. One looked like it was a building that belonged on a college campus. A huge mansion with gigantic columns across the front. Many nice mansions on the shoreline.

The road today was very nice. We had a good bike lane for a majority of the ride. We had two short but steep hills. We have heard that as you go east the roads tend to have steeper hills. We hit a couple today and we expect to encounter many more over then next few weeks. The temperatures are getting hotter. Today the afternoon temperature was in the low 90’s. I sweat a lot when it is that hot and we need to drink quite a bit to stay hydrated.

We had a couple of short breaks and had a nice lunch after 34 miles in the town of Painseville. After lunch we had about 20 miles to finish our planned route. The ride was pretty fast with a tailwind most of the day. We got to Geneva Bay State Park and we were hoping that they would allow us to camp. Most other state parks allow bikers/hikers to walk up and they will let them camp. The west coast parks have hiker/ biker only sites. Michigan has a group camp site that they allow walk up bike tourers to camp. Well Ohio is not so accommodating to bike tourers. They said all their sites are reservable and had no spots for bike tourers. The park rangers said Good Luck as they turned us away. We started calling some of the private campgrounds. We tell them we are on bikes and that made no difference. They would tell us to check another campground that was 20 miles away. They didn’t understand that 20 miles is at least a 2 hour ride and we already went 55 miles and it was around 4 pm. We started calling hotels. We found a Red Roof Inn that was 11 miles off route. We rode another hour to get to the hotel and in the morning we will ride another 10 miles to get back on route. Not too happy with the situation but what can we do?

Tomorrow we will leave Ohio and end our day in Erie Pennsylvania. One last thing, our friend Deb noticed that yesterday we completed 3000 miles on our trip. We are getting closer to the end and I estimate we will be close to 4000 miles ridden when we stop.

Today's ride: 67 miles (108 km)
Total: 3,075 miles (4,949 km)

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Rachel and Patrick HugensWe've gone into campgrounds and looked for friendly people who aren't using their full site and ask if we can share their site, and pay half. Even in state campgrounds where you might be stopped at the entrance, there is usually a back road into the campground (for fire)
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3 years ago