61.2 miles cycling, 1195′ of climbing (3453.1 total) – to read from the beginning, click here.
After coffee and some breakfast, on we went to Wauseon. Neither of us had ever heard of it, so it would be new to us as many of the small towns we have visited have been. The ride was pretty flat with a tailwind to start the day, but that switched to a headwind by noon. Other than an 8 mile stretch on US 20A at the end of the ride, we were on very quiet back roads, passing lots of fields of corn, soybean, and occasionally tomatoes.
First order of business was getting some WiFi to contact our future Warmshowers hosts. The one host in Wauseon hadn’t answered at all (not unusual) so we went to a park to eat a late lunch. Dana saw the maintenance guys out at their building and asked if it was OK to camp there, and most importantly, were the bathrooms open all night. We got a yes on the bathrooms and an OK from their supervisor for the camping. By late afternoon, the fields were starting to fill with kids practicing soccer and/or softball, so we left with all our gear for the downtown. The maintenance guys assured us that the fields would be empty by 7:30 at the latest, so we planned to come back then.
In town, we passed on the dive bar and ended up at Sullivan’s Restaurant because it looked less rough and they had a happy hour. There we met Jesse and he bought our first round after hearing about our trip and we talked to him for a long time (at least two and a half beers worth).
We went to a grocery store to get dinner and headed back to the campground. Our old differences of opinions about where to best put the tent resurfaced and we ended up near the maintenance shed. Wauseon, as was Angola, is on the old PRR/NY Central mainline (now CSX/Norfolk Southern). There were train horns blowing all night long and we were probably awakened at least once an hour. Not a greatly restful night. Tomorrow we’re heading to Elmore where we have a Warmshowers host set up.
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