We made it!

After a few days of quiet anticipation, we finally rolled in to Portland, Maine last Friday. It was exhilarating and amazing to think we had come so far and reached our goal!  Our ride through New Hampshire and Maine was really beautiful as we encountered more rolling hills and lush foliage than earlier, by the canal.  The villages we passed through had histories that went further and further back as we went east.  There was signage at almost every turn at times, pointing put historical markers from colonial and revolutionary times. We celebrated Portland by eating lobster ( Tino loved it...I thought it was overrated...), walking through old town and along the waterfront, and touring lighthouses.  It is a beautiful town, and we learned our way around pretty well in 4 days. Our host, Luke, was wonderful, allowing us the use of his car for the time we were there, and the weather was perfect for walking, sitting in outdoor coffee shops and drinking wine at a sidewalk table in Old Town.  Then, we took care of some business, sending home a box of items, and repacking our bikes for the train ride to Boston.  We took the train from Portland to The North Station in Boston, but our host here lives in Peabody, so we too another commuter to Salem, where we barely got off with our bikes before the train started moving again....whew!  Our host, Deb, met us at the station and took us to her beautiful, quiet home here in Peabody.  She has a pool, so we got a quick swim in, and a little sun bathing before she cooked us a gourmet meal.  So nice!!!!!    She is so sweet, and took us to the train station again the next morning so we could explore Boston.  In Boston we walked the Freedom Trail, and ate lunch in a tavern that supposedly started in 1636 or something....so cool!!!  We saw the USS Constitution, and Bunker Hill, and climbed the monument to look out on a foggy day in Boston from way up high.  Today, we will spend the day getting our bikes ready for the plane tomorrow, and this evening Deb is taking us to the beach to see the Atlantic one more time and have supper outside.  What a wonderful way to spend our last week out here! We are very thankful for such gracious hosts, that have become new friends....what a blessing they are!  

Home tomorrow night!  Can't wait to see everyone again!  It has been a long and wonderful summer, but I missed everyone!  Here are some pics of some of the last of our adventures....( for now).  :)

New York State...and starting week 10!

We had a great time hanging out with friends in Cambridge Ontario. We enjoyed 6 days of rest, fun, laughter and good times catching up.  Thanks to Rob, Rhonda, Emily, Ben and Jake for such a nice break!  Unfortunately, I lost my pictures that I took, so I can't post any at this time.  I was able to recover some, but can't figure out how to post them on this blog.

   We went to Niagra Falls with Rob and Rhonda, who dropped us off there, so we could continue our journey.  New York has been a great state to bike in, with bike routes clearly marked and great shoulders.  We are making good time, following the historic Erie Canal all the way across.   Since we left Michigan, we have entered a land where towns are called villages, and church spires reach up from quaint downtown squares. Where towns are only 10 miles apart, and Victorian homes line most of the streets.  It is also the land of 90% humidity and funny accents....(yes, THEY have the accent!) :)

We reach Portland within the week!  Hard to believe we have come so far.

Coffee time!

Niagra Falls

Good friends

Strolling in Paris!

Lake Ontario

Leaving at the border.

Riding along the Erie Canal

Canal locks

Wow!

Beautiful upstate New York

Old graveyard...gravestones from the 1700s!

Lake Michigan, Rail Trails and Canada.

We continue to meet sweet people along our way, like the man who was sitting by us in a small cafe, and bought our lunch when he found out we were bicycling across the country.  We stayed with such gracious hosts the night before we crossed Lake Michigan, who provided us with a gourmet meal, and a hearty breakfast on the morning we had to wake early to make it to the ferry.  Our first glimpse of Lake Michigan was through a cloudy haze, and it was beautiful, as it's massive size blended into the horizon.  The ferry ride was great, and the first thing we did was go into the quiet room and take a nap!  The crossing was 4 hours long, so we had plenty of time to rest, relax and take in the aura of the last coal fired steam ship ferry still working in the US.  

Our tour through Michigan was like a love-hate relationship.  Either the roads were sweet and indulgent, as in paved bike paths for miles and miles, or cruel and abusive, as in gravel shoulders, rough patching and rude traffic.  We enjoyed an entire day of 80 miles or so on rail trails that ran through the quiet countryside.  However, the side roads were almost impossible to ride at times, and some of the main roads had only gravel for shoulders. 

We had another interesting chance encounter that led to a beautiful place to stay one night.  The process went something like this,,,,

   We looked up hotels online for a small town called Memphis, Michigan. Only one was listed, so we called the number that was advertised. The lady who answered said the hotel hadn't been operating for several years now, and we had reached the bar that used to be attached to it.. Tino asked if there was a campground in the area, and she said she didn't know but she handed the phone to a guy named Ed at the bar, who said we could probably stay in the city park. When we got to the town, we stopped at the bar and asked for Ed, and bought him a beer while he told us that he forgot there was a blues festival in town, but if we wanted we could stay at his parents' place in the gazebo by the lake, to which he gave us directions.  We arrived completely unannounced at Ed's parents' place, introducing ourselves by saying, "Ed said we might be able to set a tent up here for the night."  Without even raising an eyebrow, Clyde, Ed's dad, simply nodded, and showed us around the place to the bathrooms, showers, and chicken coop, from which came the fresh eggs we ate the next morning.  Sweet!!!

     We had heard that the Sarnia Crossing into Canada was busy and could be a bit sketchy for cyclists, so we decided to take a 40 mile detour and cross at Marine City with a ferry going across the St Clare River. We stopped at a pub for burgers and drinks before a short ride on the car ferry into a quaint, small town called Sombra, Ontario.  The second half of the day was more difficult, as we headed north again to Sarnia, since we had a pretty heavy headwind, along with bad smelly air from the refinery, making it unpleasant.  But after a good night's sleep at our host's house we woke refreshed and pushed on to a campground that night, then to Rob and Rhonda's place, old friends and welcome faces as we rolled into Cambridge. Enjoying some much needed r&r with good friends before we head out for the last leg of our trip.

Our ride across Lake Michigan, The Badger.

Oh yeah.....

Another state line!

Beautiful rail trails.

Almost impossible roads..trying to share this with traffic on a loaded bike was an adventure, for sure...

A chance encounter leading to a beautiful place to pitch our tent for the night!

Happy to be "home".... For a few days, anyway.

Mississippi River and Wisconsin.

We have experienced wonderful people in Minnesota, and great riding, with flat roads and a west wind almost daily. And, I would never have believed a corn field could be so massive until I saw it in Minnesota.  Once, I looked in my rear view mirror, and saw what looked like a true-life Transformer from the movie coming at me from behind, massive wheels and crawling along the road, taking up both sides.  As it passed us, we were dwarfed by it's size, and I was sure we were on some sort of movie set.  But when a few more of them passed us, I realized they were actually farm equipment, and someone told me they were sprayers.  Wow.... 

       We crossed the Mississippi yesterday, into Wisconsin.  I had never seen this great river before, and I really felt like I was far from home when I finally saw it.  It really is as muddy as all the songs say to is... We followed it for a while, looking for a bike path, and it was beautiful. Sometimes it was a great river, and then it turned into a swampy mess, then a great river again.  I think it must have many personalities as it makes is way down to the Gulf.

The landscape has changed from plains to rolling hills, and we rode through a beautiful hardwood forest, that was breathing a delicious fragrance into the air. We were challenged with a few more hills yesterday and having been spoiled with flat plains for the past week or so, we both felt our legs complaining again.

   The weather has changed abruptly, and tonight it is supposed to be near record lows here for this time of year (40s), and we were soaked with a misty rain today, with more ominous clouds moving in, so we are taking refuge in an Econo-Inn for the night.  Hoping to make some good miles tomorrow.

Corn and more corn, then some soybeans, and more corn again!

Stone built silo with an old barn.

  Camping at the fairgrounds under cover from the possible storm...

First glimpse of the Mississippi....

Another state line!!

So this is the "bike path" ?  Hmmmm.  Maybe a different kind of bike....

Good with the bad....

I was not going to blog about this, but a wise person told me that I should write about the good with the bad, and I want to relate the wonderful things that have happened because of an accident, so I thought I should quickly write about what happened over the weekend.

  We crossed the border into Minnesota on Friday afternoon, and we were going to stop for a grocery run, when I hit a bad patch of gravel, along with a cracked and split road surface, resulting in me taking a bad fall. I have no memory of events afterward, but Tino tells  me that he turned around to find me unconscious, tangled up in my bike.  He flagged down help, and as they tried to get me up, I kept going in and out of consciousness, asking where I was and what I was doing there.  That made them call 911.  Long story short, I spent the night in the hospital, after being transported by ambulance to the trauma unit in Marshall, 20 miles away.  They did a CAT scan and found a concussion, a few cracked ribs and also I kept fainting because  I was dehydrated.  I was given iv fluids and monitored overnight...poor Tino sleeping  in a chair beside me.  The next morning, I tried to convince Tino to let me try to continue the trip.  He wasn't sure, and talked of flying home from Minneapolis, until the doctor came in, and told us that if I could keep the pain under control while biking, and if I felt up to it, I could go ahead and try to keep going, after a few days rest, whereupon Tino agreed to let us try.  He had been through the worst of it, since I hardly remembered anything.  

   We realized that I had no clothes to wear out of the hospital, since they had cut my clothes off in the ER in order to take the CAT scan.  When we told our nurse, Deanna, she said we could take her car to get me some clothes at a nearby Wal-Mart, after she tried to find me some clothes to wear in the donation bins.  So I was discharged and Tino drove us to Wal Mart, thankful for this generous nurse, so willing to help us. We were thinking we would take a motel for a couple of nights so I could continue to recover, but we needed to figure out how to get our bikes from the nice people that had stopped to help us the day before. When  we called them, instead of simply getting our bikes to us,they invited us to stay with them for the weekend, so I could recover in their beautiful lakeside home, instead of a motel room.  That is how we met Shirley and Charlie Warren, along with their daughter Tammy, her three kids, their son Brian, his little girl,  and her uncle Howard.  They were all at the house when we walked in, and I found out that they had all been at the scene of the accident, and had been part of the team that had helped us before the ambulance came.  We have spent the weekend with these wonderful people, and we feel like we have found a new family in them.  They have shown us love and care and accommodation far beyond what anyone could have expected.  We are feeling so blessed and overwhelmed with kindness from these gracious people. Thankful and blessed!  God shows His love for us in such wonderful ways!  We try to leave tomorrow, with a 40 mile goal to see how I do.

(Since writing this, we did leave, and made 60 miles the first day, and although a bit sore, I felt pretty good overall. Looks like p2p13 continues!!! PTL)

   Here are some pics from the weekend:

One of the last things I remember....

Swelling down and healing already!

Minimal bike damage...

Reminder about the importance of wearing your helmet, kids!

The scene of the crime.....

Our wonderful hosts....Charlie, Shirley and their son-in-law Blair, and daughter Tammy.

Our angels of mercy and new friends, at their lakeside home.  Thanks you two....you are awesome!

Dakota memories

Traveling slowly through the by-ways of South Dakota has brought back so many memories of my childhood, growing up on the prairies of North Dakota.  I had almost forgotten what it's like to be able to see endlessly across waving fields of grass, how big the sky is when it arches from the horizon in an azure dome, cloudless and of a divine, achingly beautiful blue, how lonely the sound of a train whistle can be from miles away, the smell of the sage scented winds strong and unyielding, the clear uninterrupted sound of the meadowlark, and the rhythm of the summer heat as it pulses from the earth.  I find myself just living in each moment as the miles roll slowly by, memories and new adventures down the road mingling into one thought.

    Some high points....spending time with a ranching family, whose ranch has been in the family since 1891, meeting their little girl, an eye cancer survivor, who offered us cookies, and we ended up being hosted by her gramma that night as she spontaneously offered us a bed and a shower.  Or the party we created at the bar in Highmore, where when we told them it was my birthday, the locals kept buying us drinks (yes, too many drinks...)and we played pool and darts, having come in as strangers, leaving with hugs and friendship all around.  Sleeping on the floor of a fellow musician's house, getting treated to a Brahms piano piece played by him before bed, and a great breakfast served by his friend the next morning. 

  Also, we have become quite the sensation among the equine and bovine roadside populations.  We get the strangest looks, sometimes just pricked ears and questioning eyes (what the....?), sometimes causing  an outright stampede along the fence line as we ride by.

Amazing people and amazing experiences, sprinkled with severe heat (105 dgrees!!) and exhaustion has made for all the adventure we could ask for in South Dakota!  

Visiting Laura Ingalls Wilder home in De Smet today, actually staying in a cabin on the original homestead!

Can't you just hear them...."What in the world..did you see that weird thing on the road?  What the.....???"

Sweet Sarah, showing us true hospitality

Along with Gramma Ruby!

Balanced bikes, taking a break on the hot prairie.

First glimpse of the might Missouri

Camping on the banks of the Missouri, thinking about Lewis and Clark...did they camp here too?

The actual house that Pa built!