Thirty-four states and 5,765 miles now! Towards the end of today’s ride, I crossed the border from Indiana (our 33^rd state) into Michigan.

I’m covering two days of riding in today’s entry because yesterday evening Pat and I were visiting with some friends in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Steve and Betty are people that we met on May 31 when we were staying at the Rocky Knob Cabins on the Blue Ridge Parkway (in Virginia). They were staying in the cabin next to ours and they were living their own dream — to travel the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway. But, they weren’t content to simply drive it like most people. They were trading off driving the car while the other was out experiencing the Blue Ridge Parkway in their own way. Each day, Betty would walk five miles or so on the Parkway. If you’ve ever been on the Parkway, you know that this is no easy feat! At the end of her walk, they would trade places and Steve would bicycle thirty miles or so.

We had a very nice visit with them at the Rocky Knob cabins. They were really interesting people. And, as it turned out, they lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana which was very close to being on our route through Indiana. We exchanged contact information with them and promised to get in touch with them as we got close to Fort Wayne.

As we were getting close to the Ohio and Indiana area, Steve and Betty got in touch with us and said they would love to see us as we passed through Indiana. They offered a place to stay and Steve offered to ride one or more days with me in the Fort Wayne area. We worked out the details and arranged to meet them on July 21 in Melrose, Ohio. Steve and I would ride about forty miles to Leo, Indiana which was a popular area for local bicycle rides to start and finish.The next day (today), Steve and I would start riding again in Leo and we would ride to Mongo, Indiana which was about 44 miles to the northwest of Leo and directly on my route to Sturgis, Michigan.

Yesterday’s ride was a very pleasant, very flat, and very calm ride on rural roads. It gave me a chance to hear about how the rest of Steve and Betty’s trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway went. And I a few stories to tell from the two thousand or so miles of bicycle touring since we saw them on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Today’s ride was a bit different than yesterday’s. The terrain was definitely not flat and we had a persistent 10-15 mile per hour headwind that slowed us down. On the positive side, it was a much cooler than a couple days ago. High temperatures were in the low 70’s rather than the high 80’s from a few days ago. And the humidity was a lot lower too. It was downright pleasant outside!

Here’s a couple of links to all of the photos from the last two days:

July 21: Continental, Ohio to Leo, Indiana

July 22: Leo, Indiana to Sturgis, Michigan

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 22nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.