The photos here are from my ride (almost) to the Maria Creek Baptist Church cemetery last Tuesday.

In Vigo county I had pleasant gravel roads, but I became a bit alarmed in looking at the maps of Sullivan County, which I should have done more carefully when the two women at Starbucks were trying to help me pick a route. If my very old county map was correct, I wasn’t going to find paved roads other than US-41 to take me directly across the county.  I held onto a bit of hope.   Maybe  some of the roads had been paved since that map was published, though.   I had found enough cases like that in Vigo County.

When I got to the county line, though, I saw that for Sullivan County, I wasn’t going to be so lucky.  It was time to ride on gravel.  I don’t mind riding a little gravel now and then, as long as it isn’t too washboardy or too loose.  In fact, sometimes I seek out a few miles of gravel just for variety.  But time was short and I can’t move as fast on gravel roads as on pavement.   So I headed west, to US-41.

On the way, I stopped to take a photo of this corn picker emptying its load into a truck.

A ways down the road, I heard a vehicle behind me.  I pulled off the road, as it was fairly narrow.  Then I decided I better pull off even farther.  No harvesting of bicycles for this corn picker!

Later, when I got to US-41, I stopped a few times to ask young people if they knew the back roads of this county.  They all said they didn’t.  So I stayed on US-41.