It was a cold morning at the start. The temperature was 41 degrees outside the hotel. I wore my jacket today - I knew I would warm up, but not that much. Glad to
have my knit hat and full fingered gloves as well. Lance had a flat tire at the start. Same back tire that had gone flat on him a couple of days earlier - so there must have been a sliver of glass in
the tire that made a slow leak in the new inner tube, so that by morning it had leaked all the air pressure out.
Today was not entirely on bike trails. The route followed some quiet country roads, but since these were not rail-trails, there were some minor hills. Since I was
stubbornly sticking to my goal of not shifting gears, I had to walk the bike to the top of a couple of small hills.
We were in Amish country. I saw two horse-drawn carriages, one of which I passed on my bike. There were two different road closures on the official route today. At the small town of Apple Creek, the road was closed by a tree trimming crew. That was a simple matter
to ride up to the next street and cut over to return to the marked path. But further on, the bike trail was closed and the map didn't show an easy bypass. So the group decided to ignore the sign and continue
forward. We made it through without any problems.
At Massillon we connected with the route of the Ohio to Erie Canal. This was a historic 19th century construction that linked Lake Erie to the Ohio River, allowing barges
to carry goods from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River basin. It was going to have the same dramatic effect as the Erie canal (which linked the Hudson River to Lake Erie and opened up the Great Lakes to
the Eastern Seaboard), but not long after the Ohio to Erie Canal was finished, railroads made it obsolete.There was a tow-path beside the canal where donkeys pulled the barges. It is not a rail-trail.
This tow-path has been repurposed as a multi-use recreational trail. It is not paved, but has a surface of crushed limestone and gravel. I had no problem riding on its surface with my road bike.
We finished today's ride in the city of Akron. After checking into our hotel, we walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. This was our farewell dinner, after tomorrow's ride,
the tour would be over. Hard to believe it went so fast.
Panorama Photos
Still Photographs
