54.5 mi /  5:19:51 time /  10.2 mph avg. /  499 ft. climbing
Staying at Manapogo Park Campground

We were up before our 7am alarm, with Rett getting another good 9+ hours of sleep. Cereal and coffee were nice treats at our AirBNB as we packed up all our blown apart gear (which always takes longer than breaking down camp in a campground because you totally throw all organization to the wind when sleeping inside a building). Rett was even getting a bit antsy with my dawdling, which is greatly preferred over the opposite! Especially since I was waiting for rush hour traffic to die down and rain chances to pass anyway.

A cursory inspection revealed that last night’s Neosporin + Aquaphor treatment had eliminated any visual evidence of Rett’s pain, though of course that didn’t mean that she was quite as fresh as a daisy just yet. The glorious air conditioning had completely dried out her washed pair of favorite padded shorts overnight (and to clear up any confusion over yesterday’s entry, she has been wearing padded shorts the whole time, she had just been saving her good ones for later, and trying to toughen up her skin by not babying it).

Hopping aboard after our quarter mile walk out the beautifully wooded driveway didn’t induce any yelps like yesterday, but it also didn’t appear to be super pleasant. In my planning, I had plotted out three options for the day, and due to her condition, we chose the shortest one, ending at a commercial RV Park (which I usually avoid in favor of state parks and the like). So we made our way over to Elkhart for second-breakfast at McDonald’s, which got Rett’s motor running a little faster.

She had the excellent idea a few days ago to pick up some shelf-stable gnocchi from Cost Plus World Market, so in Bristol, while I fixed a flat on her front tire, she found a jar of pesto for tonight’s dinner (the shop girl didn’t know if they had it since she didn’t even know what pesto was!)

Then we headed out down SR-120, which would be our road for the rest of the day. Smooth year-old asphalt, continuous 4 foot shoulder, cloudy skies to moderate the  temperature, small Amish (Mennonite?) farms populated with lots of horses, an unexpected bakery in the middle of nowhere, and friendly small towns put both Rett and I in a great mood for a beautiful day of true bike touring. After a day of mostly urban riding and a day of major highways in pain, I was glad that Rett finally got a taste of what I consider an ideal bike touring day. And her shorts seemed to be working, to the point where she could enjoy everything else almost as much as me (and even more when it came to the horsies and baby horsies!) By the mid-point of the day, my grave concern from last night had been turned around into a belief that we can actually do this thing!

Lunch was in  the small town of Howe, where Rett’s raspberry pie rated as the best pie she’d ever eaten. Orland, despite its small size, had a perfectly placed liquor store for us to get a bottle of wine for dinner (which I’d never had on a bike tour before, what a fantastic idea by Rett!)

I had emailed the RV Park to confirm that they had tent sites, and their positive reply mentioned that they close at 5. When I said we might not make that, they said to just grab any site we wanted, and slide $20 under the office door. Very cool of them, especially since that was even a small discount off the posted rate. When we arrived around 5:10, and were about to set up at one of the tent sites literally 100 feet from I-90 (though nicely shaded with tall trees and green grass), a woman in a golf cart pulled up, telling us that a coworker on her way home saw us on the road and called to tell her to stay late for us. She suggested a site more towards the interior of the park, where we could have electric, water, and be close to the bathrooms and showers. Rett wisely recommended that we go for that instead, even if she got distracted off-course before we made it there, by a seasonal camper’s two dogs (yes, she misses Pip very much). They still only asked $20 from us, and even offered to go back and re-open the camp store if we needed anything. Wow, I was happy that Rett could experience the “people are good” feeling I get on every bike tour, because, you know, people are good.

The electric sites were just as green and tree-shaded as the ones by the highway, the bathroom a few feet away was clean with great hot showers, and when a couple of drops of rain started falling, other friendly seasonal campers offered to variously take our bikes onto their covered deck, or let us sleep in their (two-bedroom!) trailer! As it’s literally one of the nicest campgrounds I’ve ever stayed in, it’s sure making me rethink my anti-commercial-campground bias. But don’t worry, I definitely made sure to still bring all the food into the tent. Including the awesome pesto gnocchi filling our bellies!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2014 at 7:19 am and is filed under 2014 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.