Category: 7. Ohio to Orchard Park, NY

I woke up a little before 6 to the sound of waves. As I ambled toward the bathroom for my morning ablutions, a squad of women was sweeping the leaves and sand off the road and cleaning the common areas. Sara’s Campground is, it appears, a pretty well-oiled machine.

I headed out into the morning around 8:30, NY-bound. To my last region: the East! (Is PA in the East? I guess it must be, and thank you for noting the milestone, Wendy!) Though it isn’t always trail—sometimes just a shoulder and signs telling cars to share the road—I was on PA Bike Route Z, which was nicely signed. This is a plus, since the turn-by-turn cues are glitching a bit on my device. When “128.7 miles until next cue” came up, I thought to myself “that’s an awfully long distance between cues; that’s unusual, especially in denser places.” Turns out the device maybe didn’t catch some cues? In any case, I have the device map to guide me, as well as paper maps, and it’s been fine so far.

I made a quick stop for snacks. The yogurt bar is not very good, but I’ve gotten it a couple of times for virtue. The hint was a boon, tucked away on one row of the top shelf of the drink cooler.

There was some public art. This piece was titled “The Blue Frog (I’m in Love With).”

It was hot as heck. In keeping with the grand human trait of loving to give bad news—“lotta steep hills coming up, whew!” or “hot and rainy today!”—one of the women at the campground had told me it was supposed to top 90. Spoiler alert: it did. I worked on keeping myself sunscreened and hydrated and practiced my panting.

I ran across a cemetery and cremation garden (?), also called a “garden of memories.”

I was taking a photo of the sign and puzzling over the cannon pictogram, when I caught sight of an historical marker on the median of the boulevard I was riding next to.

Oboy, and now this story. I’d seen a bike tourist up ahead at some point, and because it turns out I really mostly don’t want to see tourists going in my direction I’d slowed down a bit; I was within 30 minutes or so of a break, and I figured by the time I was done they’d be long gone. And it seemed to work! But then I hit the New York state line, and when I slowed to take a picture I realized that—of course—dude was there, taking a picture. He’d been talking to some motorcyclists across the road, but walked back over when he saw me coming and stopped right in front of my bike. We greeted each other, and I said I was just stopping for a quick picture. He offered to take one of me and the bike, and I said a friendly no thanks; he brushed me off and reached for my phone. “Come on, what kind of cycle tourist doesn’t want their picture taken with the sign??” Before I could stop myself, I said “The kind of cycle tourist who doesn’t like to be told how to do it.” Whoops. But also true. He apologized for his presumption, and we chatted slightly awkwardly for a couple of minutes; he complained about the boring flatness, told me a major storm system was coming, then took off, and I let him get out of sight before moving on. I’m not sure how I come out looking here, honestly, and I clearly already didn’t want to be interacting with the poor guy independent of his own merits or lack thereof. But that shit made me bristle.

I stopped for a sit break in the shade.

In Westfield I saw a small lighthouse.

I took a sit break in a largely Polish and half-empty (of graves) cemetery with a breathtaking view of Lake Erie behind a tangle of trees and brush; because of the bluffs, there’s no real lake access, which I guess makes it less valuable real estate. Speaking of which: so many vineyards! I did not know they were growing all these grapes up on Lake Erie! I passed vineyard after winery, and the shoulder was stenciled with bottles marking stops on a wine tour.

The elevation continued, with about 1700 feet of total climbing for the day and a few hundred less of descent; I’m climbing toward Niagara Falls, presumably. I sweated my way to Evangola State Park, where Joyce and I have stayed twice before. During our first, memorable stay, a high school graduation camping trip was transpiring, but the cop making rounds (?) kept busting the teens with beer and ultimately made them stand in a circle and pour it all out. The irate teen peeling out of the parking lot, shouting “This SUCKS!” has become part of the lexicon of bike tour and beyond. The second time we were there, there was also a cop; he told us some guys drunk and high on Xanax had driven their car off the bluff, but they were fine. This go-round was much less exciting, about which I have no complaints. I walked down to the beach and, still sticky from my ride pre-shower, waded into the lake to cool down. Em noted the other day that nothing beats this after a hot ride, and she was 100% correct.

For the third night in a row, I got to fall asleep to the low roar of lake surf, and if that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

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.

I said goodbye to Andrew until Maine today, which was hard. I also said goodbye to all the amenities that Andrew conveyed: extra dresses and underwear, my electric toothbrush, Doritos and Diet Coke on arrival. It was, as you might imagine, a difficult parting.

He dropped me at a park in Avon Lake, 30+ miles from Sandusky; this would save me from a 95-mile day that included navigating Cleveland, my last truly large city of the trip. It’s actually very well routed and signed, but getting through a city always takes more time: more turns, more traffic, more people.

The bitterness of parting was sweetened somewhat by my proximity to Lake Erie, which I’ll be following for the next few days.

The trail through Cleveland was well marked and also familiar; I’m now on a route Joyce and I have taken twice before, once when we rode to NY and once on Infinity Tour around Erie and Ontario.

Returning to the ACA route was also a significant lifestyle upgrade; I’m back to getting turn-by-turn directions, which made Cleveland a lot smoother than I expected.

I had been struggling to remember how Joyce and I had dealt with Cleveland on past tours—it’s hard to get through it and far enough east of it to find camping options. While Andrew and I were pondering this and noodling around on Googlemaps, we ran across Perry Township Park, about 35 miles east of Cleveland, and a lightbulb went off: this was where we’d stayed both previous times. I love Perry Township Park—it has beautiful, lake-overlooking campsites, free for cyclists, and it’s quiet and friendly. I just hadn’t remembered where it was.

I made my way there, aided by a bit of tailwind (YASSSSS!) out of the south. I’d forgotten how steeply Erie curves north—that and Ontario are much of how I get back toward the north after my sharp drop south through Michigan.

It was very quiet at the park. I’d called earlier to verify they had sites, and the park manager said to just go ahead and set up if I didn’t see her when I arrived; she had a funeral in the evening and wouldn’t be around. I went ahead and got myself parked at the same site we’d had in prior years and took a shower. There were maybe 20 RVs in the place, but only one car (truck); I could see its owner inside the camper watching TV. After a while, he came out and asked if I wanted firewood, and shortly after he left. I’m pretty sure I was the only overnight camper at Perry Township Park Monday night.

I talked on the phone with mom while it rained out over the water and then got into the tent right as it started to rain over me. We chatted until the rain let up, then I went to brush my teeth and headed to bed to the whoosh of wind and waves.

I spent so much time on trail today, and it was glorious.

I was reconnecting with the ACA route sometime today or tomorrow, but still mapping myself for today, and I grumbled a little that Andrew got to drive along the coast—water on both sides at one point!—and I had to drop south into a headwind just to ride north again to Sandusky; both the ACA route and Googlemaps routed south. But the trail was the reason, and it was worth it.

To get there I departed through the southern outskirts of Toledo, with the same dispiritingly neglected and worn-down feel as every other city’s far reaches. Even Rogers Park, the vibrant neighborhood where I live, gets poorer and dingier as you approach the border with Evanston.

Despite the headwind, I moved at a good pace. It’s still very flat; other than an unexpected 1600+ feet of elevation between Flint and Ann Arbor (of course), the climbing has been minimal and unremarkable.

And then the trail! I had 25 or so miles on beautifully well marked, paved trail—the Inland Coastal trail, which appears to run 70+ miles—running through farmland and trees. There were ample sit spots and bike repair stations and lots of folks out using the trail on a lovely Sunday afternoon. Even when it went through Fremont, a city of 16k, the bike route was well enough marked that I didn’t have to stop for map checks. ❤️

And then a tailwind as I cut back north to Sandusky, which, Andrew texted to say, had an unexpectedly charming downtown. And it did!

I arrived early afternoon, and we headed out for a walk along Sandusky’s waterfront.

We took a break for beers at Daly’s Pub.

Then we headed back to the motel for showers before another foray into Sandusky for dinner and cocktails overlooking the water.

With an early morning departure ahead of us—Andrew is taking me about 30 miles down the road to avoid a long day through Cleveland—we went back to the motel and hit the hay.