July 9, 2022
Our church is like fudge, sweet with a few nuts
Ohio bike day
Well, despite some energetic dancing last night in a less than desirable studio, we both felt good enough for a long bike ride this morning. Don worked up a square shaped route that happened to take us by several churches. So, I dubbed this ride the "Tour de Ohio Churches"!
As it was cooler when we woke up with temps in the 50's and was only going to reach mid-70's, we waited to ride until 10. But it was a beautiful sunny day here in Ohio! There was a light NE breeze along with low humidity which is about as good as you can here in the summer.
Cruising into Archbold, we passed the first church - the Endtime Harvest Church. I couldn't find out much about this on the computer but imagine it's a non-demonitional one. Just down Main Street was a more interesting, older one - St. Peter's Catholic Church.
This parish began in 1846 in the home of one member. That was followed by a log cabin on the site of the St. Peter's Cemetery which we visited the other day and then a larger church in town in 1869. The present church was built in 1908.
Continuing through town, we turned onto a side street and went by the Archbold Methodist Church which was founded in 1854. There was an old frame church at that time that was built in 1863 or 1872 that was moved to this present site. Additions were added to that in 1966 and 1988 so it's a more modern looking structure.
Our route now took us out of town into the countryside where we rode mile after flat mile past all of the farms. There wasn't much traffic and we enjoyed looking around us. Yup - corn on this side and beans on the other. Or is it beans on this side and corn on the other? Or maybe beans and beans or corn and corn?!
On down the road, we finally came to our turn where there was another church - St. Mark's Lutheran which was founded in 1880 by 13 German Lutheran families that settled in this area.
Making a left, we discovered an annoying east headwind. Not bad, but we had to make more of an effort to pedal. The scenery was more of the same until we unexpectedly came to a small cemetery out in the middle of a field. We stopped to check it out, thinking it was just a family cemetery but we found a marker indicating it was the site of Zion Church, the first Lutheran Church in this county. Heh - a bonus church!
On down the road we went until we reached our turn where there was yet another church. This was St. Paul's Lutheran Church. The current building built in 1981 was located on one corner while a cemetery and the steeple from the original church was on the other.
I would have preferred to see the old church as it sounded interesting. It was built in 1867 by a German carpenter. It was constructed using all hand-hewed timbers and logs. Inside were 2 wood stoves but no center aisle. Instead, there were 2 side aisles with a divider down the middle separating the men's side from the ladies side.
Continuing on, there were a few little rollers when we crossed a creek but it was still pretty flat. But we were now traveling straight into a NE wind which made us work harder. We were really glad when after several miles of that nonsense when we were able to turn west. Now we really cruised along at 17 mph with a nice tailwind!
So far we've really liked biking in NW Ohio but when there's a wind, it can make it tough to ride the flat roads. The fields are so open that there's nothing to stop the wind from hitting you. But the grid layout of roads are quite nice with about 1 mile between them.
We were starting to feel the miles by now but knew that we didn't that much further to travel. When we came to the village of Pettisville, we passed another church - the Pettisville Missionary Church which is an evangelical denomination "committed to planting"???? and world missions". I read that on-line.
As we reached Archbold, we passed the huge Sauder manufacturing facility, a veritable "church" all on its own in this area.
In 1934, Erie Sauder started a woodworking business in a barn behind his home in Archbold. He began crafting custom cabinetry and church pews along with small tables that were made from the leftover fine wood.
The Sauder company continued to grow and flourish. In 1953, it created a table that could be assembled at home. This snap-together table marked the beginning of the ready-to-assemble industry that Sauder is now known for. In 1976, Erie, founded a living history farm and village that is next to our campground. We haven't taken time to visit it, but others say it's very interesting.
We made one last turn to the north until we got to Highway 2. I knew we'd driven past a Mennonite church the other day near this intersection and wanted to include that in our day. So I talked Don into stopping so I could take a picture.
This was the Central Mennonite Church.
In 1834, 3 groups of Amish Mennonite Germans and Swiss origin made their way through the wet and mosquito-ridden Black Swamp in order to make a new home north of Archbold. Settling there, they first had services in homes. But as the congregation grew, they had to construct larger and larger meeting halls. The present church was built in 2008. Kind of boring but I guess it serves the purpose.
So if you're counting - we saw 8 churches today!
It was only a short distance back to the campground now and we were both kind of glad to be done with the ride. It had been a good one, but with the little headwind and longer distance, we were tired.
We rested the remainder of the afternoon and chose to eat out in a Mexican restaurant for dinner. It had been another great day in NW Ohio!
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Today's ride: 35 miles (56 km)
Total: 236 miles (380 km)
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