June 7 - Paulding, OH to Huntington, IN (61 miles)

 Our day started at 4am with coffee brewed in our Inn room along with protein bars - just enough to give us the fuel to pedal 22 miles to Monroeville, where we enjoyed a 'real' breakfast.  Our idea to beat both the heat and the wind paid off.  We did have a bit of rain, but more than anything, if felt good - kept us cool.

We completed 61 miles (finished Section 9 of the Northern Tier Route, as well as passed thru Ohio) before noon which made us feel like we could have extra time to relax today.  The next several day poses challenges for us to find both food and places to sleep because the route is taking us to some pretty remote places in Indiana, where there just isn't a whole lot of services available.

But we've gained quite a bit of confidence that we can plan for it and be fine...

States Completed:

Maine

New Hampshire

Vermont

New York

Pennsylvania 

Ohio. - CHECK

Oh... and see if you can identify what is in Jake's hand in the bottom pic

June 6 - Bowling Green to Paulding, OH (72 miles)

 We did get up and going fairly early, but being a Sunday and going through small towns in OH, we were afraid that we needed to make sure we got a good breakfast on the way out of town.  So basically had to wait til 6am to get food and I think we were on the road by 6:30.

We had mild headwind most of the day today as well, but far, far better than yesterday.  Mr. Google said that we had about 10mph headwind and much of the day today, they ended up being a bit more of a crosswind.  Anyhow, we completed the first 50 miles in about 4 hours.  It was quite hot (about 91 deg), though, so we stopped in Defiance, OH for a lunch and bathed in some AC inside a Subway sandwich store.  

After a cool-down and lunch, we peddled on another 22 miles to our destination - Paulding, OH.  We both felt much better today after a humiliating wind day yesterday and we completed 72 miles.  Staying at Bittersweet Inn, which is a large house sectioned into 5 separate rooms.  Our plan is to get on the road by 5am in the morning, so..... g'night!

June 5 - Avery to Bowling Green, OH (63 miles)

 This was a super tough day with direct headwinds the entire ride today anywhere from 15mph upwards to 25-30 mph gusts.  We used our climbing gears much of the day just to get thru - very psychologically challenging and physically draining.

We looked up the wind charts for the rest of Ohio and Indiana and basically they are very cyclical - mostly calm until around 9-10 am as the heat starts coming on.  The wind peaks at about 1pm and doesn't really die down until about 5-6pm.  We agreed that we need to start our days about 3 hours earlier and get on the road by about 5:30am.  If we do this while riding on these flat roads, we should be averaging over 12 mph and should be able to complete an average day by about noon.  

This was probably the best part of the day... going to this coffee shop.  We didn't quite understand the misery in store for us - hence the innocent smiles :)

June 4 - Cleveland to Avery, OH (58 miles)

 Nice day - mostly sunny, humid and temp ranged from 62-83 deg.  

Just a note to start - I bought a crowler from Butcher Brewer called 'Day Trip', which seems to be appropriate for our adventure!  It is a NEIPA and I thought was excellent.  

We intentionally got a bit of late start this morning due to the fact that I had an appointment to get my new tires installed.  The shop doesn't open until 11am, but Ryan opened it up at 10 as a favor so we could keep moving forward.  I included the picture of my tires prior to their maiden voyage, along with Ryan.  I really appreciated him because he really went out of his way to get me back on the road.

Below a few more pics of the scenery along the route today.  I encountered a draw bridge - kinda fun.  The boat that passed was just a tiny sail boat and I think if you look carefully in the video, you can barely see the top of the mast go by.  We had to chuckle about all the effort to get that little boat under the bridge!  The last picture is a tick that is on the outside of my tent.  They are freaking me out - I've already flicked off about 8-9 of them.  Even though this is a fine campground, I can't wait to get out of here tomorrow!

June 3 - Rest Day (Cleveland)

We did a rest day today - no pedaling at all.  This is the first rest day we've had since North Woodstock, NH.  We took the opportunity to gather some items that we've not been using on the trip to ship back home - a pair of glasses each, clothing, some straps, towel and Jake sent home his spare folding tire.  In total we probably shed 5-6 pounds of 'things'.  

The post office was tucked away inside a building called the Arcade.  It was and old train-station looking, very interesting early 20th century architecture type building and completely empty of people.  It cost $42 to ship our stuff home.

We also had a few celebrity visitors that met up with us for lunch and a smoothie.  Pictured below you will see Jake and I along with my best-friend-in-the-world-who-I-talk-to-about-once-every-7years... JT Harris and is son Bryce.  I have few talents, but one of my best is choosing great friends!

Jake and I are also exploring the barbecue and local craft beers - trying to load some proteins and carbs before we get back on the trail tomorrow morning.

Also, I called a bike shop on the route out of town called Beat https://www.beatcycles.com/ cycles and a guy named Ryan is helping me out - ordered 2 new tires (schwalbe marathon) because I'm tired of rear flats.  Anyway, our first stop tomorrow will be getting some new tires installed!

Aside from the above, Jake and I are refreshing our laundry and watching NBA!

June 2 - Perry Township to Cleveland (44 miles)

 Relatively easier day today - only 44 miles.

We started the day very early, getting our camping gear put away and breakfast eaten and ready to get to Cleveland to catch a baseball game.  But.... rear flat tire again.

This time, I was able to find the culprit - a piece of glass lodged into my rear tire.  I pulled it out, but after having 2 flats in 3 days, I've decided to swap out my Maxis Overdrive tires and replace them with Schwalbe Marathon.  Found a cycle shop in Cleveland that can supply them by Friday (I'll pick them up and install them on our way out of town).  

Aside from the flat tire, all went smooth.  We were worried about rain, which was in the forecast.  But we only hit light sprinkles.  We opted to skip lunch in favor of finding some great Tai food in Cleveland (late lunch) followed by a super good Barbecue later tonight.

Oh, one other thing... I ran into my big brother, Mark and his wife Jenny today.  Funny thing, we were both cruising around Mentor, OH and just sort of bumped into each other ;). Well, it wasn't quite that accidental, they had already planned a vacation (Jenny grew up in Mentor), and our route happened to take us through at exactly the same time they were visiting.  We did a photo-op and were on our way!

  

June 1 - Erie, PA to Perry Township, OH (65 miles)

Super nice riding day.  

Most of the route from Erie to Perry is filled with grape farms.  They look different than the ones I'm used to in the West.  I'm used to older, meatier looking vines.  These seemed to be much less established, but maybe it's because the use of these grapes are different so the variety and hence vine is way different.  I really didn't look it up yet.  But I didn't see any winery's, so I'm just assuming that these were not being used for wine.  Anyhow, it must have been 20-30 miles straight of really beautiful wine fields.

We stayed at a really cool campground in Perry Township.  There were no places to eat, so we were worried that we'd be eating oatmeal for dinner.  However, upon arrival to the camp, we found that there was a few baseball parks nearby with concession stands - burgers!  Also, we were treated very, very kindly by Charlotte, the manager of the campground.  She didn't charge us a nickel for staying - she said that she never charges people on bicycles because we are doing something she had always wanted to do herself.  The campground was relatively small, very clean and quiet and RIGHT on lake Erie.

Oh, and Pennsylvanian - CHECK!!

Complete:

Maine

New Hampshire

Vermont

New York

Pennsylvania