Apr 062013
 

Along the Muskingum River

I had expected the last day to be the most difficult of all. However, the ride from Zanesville to Marietta was surprisingly easy. It was about 20 miles longer I had originally planned, but by staying close to the Muskingum River it was mostly level and quiet going.

A road closure on Ohio Hwy 60 south of Zanesville forced me to the west side of the river. I then missed a turn and headed south on Hwy 555. Even though it added five extra miles to the day’s ride, I made the right choice by going back and continuing along the river.

At the point shown in the photo, 2.5 miles after rejoining the river, I thought such a nice, level ride close to the river couldn’t last. So I stopped to take a photo of the way I had come. But in fact, it did last for much of the way.

Big Bottom

At McConnelsville I re-crossed to the east side of the river, and instead of taking Hwy 60 on a shortcut across a loop of the river, decided it would be easily worth the 10 extra miles to stay close to the river. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have happened on the site of the Big Bottom Massacre, now a public park (shown in the photo above) near StockPort. However, a few miles later I did meet some big hills at the base of the loop, and then contrary winds on my way north again.

In Beverly a woman at a convenience store told me that there was one big hill on the 20 miles remaining to Marietta. That turned out to be exactly right, but it was easy to take knowing that once I was over this one, the hard part would be over.

The day’s ride was 81 miles. The ride across Ohio was 304.5 miles. YTD 354.5


View 2013 Van Wert to Marietta OH in a larger map

Marion to Mount Vernon

Marion to Mount Vernon

Most of the miles of today’s ride from Marion to Mt Vernon were in Morrow County, Ohio.  There were a lot of small bridges. There were iron bridges of various types, including trestles.   Many of these were one lane bridges, but there were also two-lane bridges reduced to one lane, and one-lane bridges reduced to [...]

First photo stop of the season

First photo stop of the season

This was the first photo stop this morning (Monday April 1).  It was taken south of Van Wert, Ohio, on Greenville Road. View 2013 Van Wert to Marietta OH in a larger map After visiting Fort Amanda and some reserve boundaries, I headed to Kenton. The weather was cooler than I would have liked — [...]

Canandaigua and Walworths

Canandaigua and Walworths

The business district of Canandaigua, Michigan, was all closed up when I arrived Sunday afternoon (two Sundays ago). Even though it didn’t look as interesting to me as the scenes on this side of the street, I got to wondering if I should have pointed my camera across the street to the left (west), to [...]