The start to the day was an easy four mile glide down back into downtown Columbia. Then of course a steep hill as we churned away from the river valley. At least we had a decent shoulder to avoid the heavy Saturday morning recreation traffic. We knew we were traveling through our good friend's home turf. We passed a sign for a school where he (a biology teacher) started his first teaching job and then into Mt. Joy, which we think was their home town.
A shot of Mt. Joy on a beautiful Saturday morning. They seemed excited about a "popcorn" festival. It may have something to do with a popcorn factory we passed going out of town.
Rhona had two focuses today, watch for dangerous traffic and detect Amish roadside strawberry and Whoopie Pie stands early enough for us to bring the tandem to a graceful halt. Here she stands in triumph displaying her trophies. I was happy because we were at the top of a hill.
Funny, after buying the strawberries and the whoopie pies, Rhona was on the lookout for a nice place to eat lunch.... they were calling to her!
We've seen Amish people using these pushbikes. The story we heard is that they don't use regular bicycles because they can go faster than a horse. That wouldn't have been much of a problem on many of the hills these last two days.
We stopped to eat lunch on the front porch of an Amish White Goods store. Rhona had to tell me what "white goods" were. This is an example of the challenge to find a parking spot for the 15 foot long tandem B.O.B. trailer combination.
But that was no problem. One of the older ones ambled over and convinced Rhona to give up her last two baby carrots. We'll probably hear on the news tonight that a rare prize miniature donkey was poisoned by a sweet baby carrot.
This was a brave effort to ward off deer and other animals that prefer gardens to wild vegetation. Some of the female scarecrows seemed to have a sense of color coordination and style, others just slouched without any consideration of their appearance to the general public.
We left the actual ACA Atlantic Coast route to end up in Morgantown, PA (not Morgantown, WV) where our wonderful grandchildren live. It's probably hard for bicycle tourists who are still working to understand that even retired bicycle tourists have some constraints on the length of our tours. In our case it's those grandchildren who we feel we have to actually pick up and hug at least once a week. We'll have to get by with Skype video calls during this tour, but it's still not the same.
Today's ride: 55 miles (89 km) Total: 330 miles (531 km)
