Day 133 - Alliance to New Philadelphia - Two Far 2022 - Reunion Bound (the long way around)

September 19, 2022

Day 133 - Alliance to New Philadelphia

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We said goodbye to Jan and Dean over breakfast. They are off on a Santana trip to Australia next month. We'll see them again when they come to Crystal River in February and March of 2023.

We'd been watching today's weather for the last two days. The forecast was for morning rain and thunderstorms ending sometime in the afternoon. We had plans in place to stay in the hotel today if it looked too stormy to ride. By this morning, it seemed that the rain would be over by 11:00AM, so we were good to go. The rain actually ended by 10:30, so we waited a bit for it to dry out and were rolling by 11:30. There was only a 15-20% chance of more rain later in the day.

The first town we rode through was Louisville. We had never been in this town and found it very attractive.

This is a first for us - a gaily decorated Jersey barrier.

The main street had several well maintained large old brick homes.

This one looks European to me. You well-travelled readers - in which country would you place it?

And this is part of a large park-like lawn of a private home.

Continuing past Louisville, some common Ohio views -

Our original route for today had over 1600 feet of climbing with a couple of >10% grades. At dinner last night, Dave told us it was much better to take a route which went right through downtown Canton and avoided the steepest climbs. He was right (Thank-you, Dave!) and we ended up with only about 1000 feet of ascent. As a bonus, we got to ride through the heart of Canton. Perhaps we didn't see the city's best side, because it was grimy, dilapidated, and generally unattractive.

Around halfway through the route, it started getting a little overcast and we had a few light sprinkles of rain. It passed quickly and we thought that was the end of it. A few miles later, we came to a Dollar General. It had been less than ten miles since lunch and I wasn't really inclined to stop, but Kerry was ready for a break. We parked the bike out front and went in. About a minute later, I heard what sounded like hard rainfall. I thought it must be something else and walked to the front of the store. Sure enough, it was really raining. I can't move the bike by myself when it is loaded, so I went back in to get Kerry. I met him walking to the door and we got the bike moved under a wide overhang, protected from the rain and wind. The rain continued, hard at times, for about 20 minutes. All I could think of was how seriously lucky we were to be in the store the entire time it rained - and the bike was out in it less than two minutes. I was very glad I had not tried to talk Kerry out of that stop! We stowed the phones and camera away in a waterproof bag just in case another sudden storm came up, but we had no more rain the rest of the way.

The Dover Dam is a flood control dam built by the Army COE. We were only two miles from our destination and the sky was blue, so I decided to dig the camera out for a few pictures.

Behind the dam - I hope there's not a sad story behind that little canoe caught in the tree limbs down there.

Kerry walked down and talked to a guy fishing.

We finally got to our room a little after 5:00. We got subs from Jersey Mike's and ate in the room. I had a lot of blogging to catch up on. Tomorrow is the penultimate ride of Reunion Bound.

Today's ride: 43 miles (69 km)
Total: 4,337 miles (6,980 km)

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