70 miles, 2315′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

Waking up in a campground while touring is its own little adventure. Get out of the tent (as quietly as you can), head to the restrooms (or closest trees that block the other campers’ view), maybe crawl back in the tent for another few minutes, heat water for coffee, make something that resembles breakfast (never cooked in our campground), and then start gathering and repacking. We’ve done it in a half hour or so when there’s a tight schedule, but usually it’s an hour and a half or more. Today was about that 1 1/2 hour before we rolled out of the campground.

69.3 miles, 1650′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

After a hearty and healthy breakfast of yogurt, granola, & crepes, we said good-bye to David and Christa, and headed off to see Michigan Stadium before heading out of town. Since it’s half-buried, it’s not quite as impressive as Beaver Stadium or the Gator Stadium in Gainesville, but since it’s still the largest capacity stadium in the U.S. and the second largest in the world, we had to imagine what it looked like from the inside.

65 miles, 1342′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

Today’s ride took us through the outskirts of Toledo — from inner city blight to ‘burbs to farmland on the way to Ann Arbor. After arriving at David’s & Christa’s, we got both a warm welcome and a warm shower. David, it turns out, went to Penn State for his advanced degree in acoustics and works for Ford. Christa is a retired schoolteacher who spent three years at the JFK school in Berlin where Aaron & Sarah went when we lived there. But before we had an evening of story swapping with them, we headed into Ann Arbor for a quick tour of this Big10 town.

71.6 miles, 784′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

A quick breakfast at Laney’s, a little work on the bikes, and we were off to what we thought would be Maumee Bay State Park. It was a beautiful day and we spent much of our ride on the North Shore Inland Trail. The most flat we’ve had so far, and Ohio has been a lot of flat and a great way to ease our muscles and butts in for a long tour.

60.1 miles, 1532′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

After bidding adieu to Greg & Eileen, we headed off to Norwalk and our next Warmshowers host, Laney. It started raining shortly after we left and we ducked into a pet food manufacturer’s covered dock and had a conversation with one of the employees, Bob, about the pet food industry and how it changed in the 50 years he’d been there.

45.1 miles, 1672′ of climbing – to read from the beginning, click here.

We had a lovely stay at the DeAngelo’s lake house on Wednesday and did indeed need the shelter as it stormed most of the day. We did get a hike in, and I did some work on the bikes. We thought there was a decent 3 hour break in the rain coming up so we got into the kayaks and paddled north on Lake Milton. About 45 minutes in, the previously sunny afternoon turned dark and I suggested we head for a bridge for shelter from the impending storm. Sure enough, shortly after we hit the bridge, the skies opened and we stayed dry and safe from the lightning.

We arrived at Dana’s cousins’ in Youngstown around noon yesterday, unpacked the bikes and gear and said a heartfelt thank you and good-bye to Tinamarie & Todd as they headed off to Cuyahoga Valley National Park & Cleveland to visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

We’re on our way to Youngstown! We left only 15 minutes past our target time, so an auspicious beginning – for us anyway.

Our original tour plan for this year was to head to Southern Cal in February, but the fires quashed that plan. On anticipation of that trip though, my daughter Sarah’s very thoughtful Christmas present was a “care package” of touring related envelopes filled with encouragement and some cash to enjoy the related activities. Now that we’re finally headed out on tour, I thought it would be a great precursor to share them with you now.

Dana and I are embarking July 15th on a 3,000+ mile adventure through the upper midwest. Our friends Tinamarie and Todd are driving us to Dana’s cousins’ in Youngstown, and we’ll start from there on the 16th. Roughly, we’ll be heading to Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and back to Ohio (and maybe even ride back home through PA).

More to follow soon, of course, but we’re very busy prepping and getting the houses ready for a long absence.