Three State Special

Breaks are important (as are brakes)

Phew. Lots deserves covering in the last few days, but I haven’t had much downtime do the covering.

Last your heard from me was traveling along Lake Erie in western New York. That was… let me think… three days ago. To recap the three days since then:

• Monday: Crossed in to Pennsylvania and traveled to Erie, where I stayed the night and slept adjacent to Presque Isle State Park.
• Tuesday: Crossed into Ohio, where I stayed the night at Geneva State Park.
• Wednesday (today): traveled to Cleveland, where I’m staying at a rare American hostel.

So let’s get into some details and more importantly a few pictures, which are more interesting than words.

Pennsylvania

I crossed the border into Pennsylvania about half way through my day on Monday, and didn’t notice a drastic change from New York. I think in general this region is more defined by the lakes themselves than by state borders. I made it to Erie with lots of daylight left, as planned, as I wanted to take a leisurely pace through the city and have time at the State Park adjacent to it. My route through Erie led me along a waterside bikeway, then up into some neighborhoods, then back down a hill, under a rollercoaster that went over the road, and deposited me at “Sara’s Campground”

After I had set up there, I took a ride around the 12 mile bike path along the peninsula. So for a planned low milage day, it was a lot of biking I ended up doing, something like 60 miles. Oh well, it was nice.

The birds on Presque Isle (which is actually a peninsula) were quite bold. This one wanted my granola.

Biking in the park. Note: that’s not me.

The campground was adjacent to a 50s style retro diner complete with throwback music, so I got a classic American dinner there, as well as desert to have on the beach while the sun set. It’s odd being on a beach where the water is not salty. Also, as an amendment to my previous statement with regards to Lake Erie’s size: I think I judged it as smaller than it really is, since I first saw it at a point where it’s far shore could be seen. There’s definitely no way to see across the whole with of it though, and it may as well be an ocean.

One view of the diner. Doesn’t do the immersive quality justice. This wasn’t actually the functioning diner. Where food was made and served, but I only have so much room in a post.

The trifecta. That said, waffle fries give curly fries a run for their money.

I won’t lie, this picture was taken with the sole intention of making the viewer jealous.

Ohio

The next day was not a rest day, and I got moving as early as I could and stayed moving at a steady pace.

Pit stop at a place in to lazy to remember right now. I’ll look it up later and update this post, if I feel like it..

Things.

I crossed into Ohio sometime in the afternoon. The first thing I noticed was that the quality of the road degraded immediately and measurably. It appeared that I had talked New York and Pennsylvania for granted. But then the quality improved. And then degraded again. And the same can be said for the shoulder width and general pleasantmess of the scenery and towns. Ohio appears to be a land of greater extremes than states I am used to, at least when it comes to infrastructure and road maintenance.

I arrived at Geneva State Park around 3 or 4 and took care of my usual chores. I made a meal of rice and chili using my liiittle stove, and with everything done for the day, and the weather meeting as beautiful as it was, just lay down to relax as the sun set, listening to music for the first time in a few days. If you ever get a chance in the near future to just lay down in the grass and watch the sky and clouds and birds and other things do their respective things, I highly recommend that you take that opportunity.

Cleveland

My second day riding in Ohio brought more of the frustration at the less than ideal road quality, mixed with feelings of “oh, this isn’t so bad, maybe I am being too harsh on Ohio”. In any case, I rode through it and made it to “The Cleveland Hostel”, an americanized hostel experience which a super affordable place to stay on the city, when compared to regular motels or hotels. It also offers a fully functional kitchen, which I’ve already made full use of, a cool neighborhood called Ohio City, nice and interesting people to hang out with, and a rooftop patio with an awesome view of the city. I made sure to make full use of all of these things, and met a fellow hostel-mate named Jay to go out and get a feel for the neighborhood and get a bit too eat (hi Jay!)

Anyways, that doesn’t come nearly close to describing all the things I saw, bit this is getting looks, so I’ll stop there. Until next time!