Day 55. Perry to Erie, PA, 70 miles

After a night of wild wind, I woke up to a bone-dry tent, including the footprint. I don’t know how this happened, given the rain of the night before, but I consider it a bit of the magic of Perry Township Park.

I was reminded that Perry was also an early lesson in Joyce’s and my study of mayflies; we encountered them in full swarm for the first time on Lake Erie back in 2012. “They don’t bite!”, a sign helpfully informed us.

I was all alone in the park, and I lingered a bit to take advantage, checking out the lake one last time and savoring the quiet. Then I headed out into a day of largely favorable winds (thank you!) and sunshine. With only 60+ miles ahead of me (turned out to be 70 whoops) and an 8:30 departure, I could take a relatively relaxed approach to the day.

The climbing had picked up a bit after Cleveland; I saw some rolling with occasional steep grades yesterday. That continued today, with 1100+ feet of ascent and less descent, like yesterday. Lake Erie is bluffy, but it’s just an amuse bouche; there are many courses of real climbing to come.

It’s a strange thing to be doing this enormous physical undertaking. I’ve never been athletic; in school I regularly faked sprained ankles to get out of various sportsball-centered gym classes. Despite this, my parents sent me on two summer bike trips, and I loved them (is my recollection); it didn’t turn me into a bike tourist right away, but it laid the foundation. The second trip is also the origin of the bike chain I have worn around my wrist for 30+ years now.

Wendy was the first person I knew who took real joy in physical exertion; when she started aikido and fell in love with it and then started running and got real into that as well, I was admiring and baffled in equal parts. Laura and Eric were the early adopters of year-round biking in my life, and I thought they were maybe crazy. And then my bike got stolen, and Steve introduced me to Working Bikes, and I met a group of wonderful people who liked biking. And suddenly it didn’t seem so crazy, and in 2008 when I started at the law firm I began commuting the eight miles by bike year-round. That eventually became a Lake Michigan Circle Tour and a 40-mile round-trip bike commute and, well, this trip.

There was a fair amount of open waterfront—the lake side of the road was too close to the lake or the lake too far below for development—which was a delight. There were also stretches of beachfront rental cottages and private homes with quirky names and whimsical signs.

There is nothing remarkable about the following video except that it’s one of my favorite things to see: big water at the end of the road I’m on.

Geneva-on-the-Lake (GOTL, a sign announced) was a mini-Coney Island of sorts, with fried food and ice cream stands lining the main thoroughfare. It was too early, though, and nothing was open, the streets empty of foot traffic.

In Ashtabula, I stopped at the Saybrook Metro Park (which had a restaurant called “Martinis!”) for a sit break. It was a charming prairie park, with pathways for walking and riding both.

And then, after Conneaut with its trying-too-hard slogan, “Life is just better here!”, I was in Pennsylvania.

I had been marveling at the strangeness of Pennsylvania having just 50 miles of lake coast—like, how did that happen?—when I ran across this sign.

I probably saw this sign the last two times, maybe even read it! But this time I’ll remember it for real. $151k was a lot of money in 1792, but from what I saw of lakefront properties and vineyards, it was an excellent investment.

And then I arrived at Sara’s Campground. Ah, Sara’s Campground. It’s at the foot of Presque Isle State Park—which doesn’t allow camping—and is the trashy base camp for state park expeditions, with all the commercial ventures that entails. Joyce and I have previously stayed on the side of the road behind the Sara Coyne strip mall (“the mosquito pit,” Joyce unaffectionately calls it), but this time they put me on the corner of the beach campground on the other side of the road, under an amusement park whose roller coaster, paired with the waves, is the soundtrack to the place.

It’s a weird place. There are old camper vans—the ones closest to the beach—that are obviously permanent; they have built-on decks and the like. They are funky and kinda run down, but clearly loved. And there are some houses maybe? But lining the narrow strip of beach are tent sites three deep, right up to the water and back to the campground road. And across the street you can get a slice of pizza and a mango booze slushie while you wait for your laundry. Which, Sara’s Campground does, despite its raucous vibe, have pretty nice facilities: cheap laundry, clean bathrooms and showers (a quarter for 5 minutes), and a good camp store.

And even though it has a party feel—quiet hour starts at 11—as soon as the sun sets it settles right down, and the whoosh and crash of the waves is the only sound I can hear as I snuggle down for sleep.