Day 70: September 13, 2024 - Elizabethtown, IL, to Grand Rivers, KY
End: Grand Rivers, KY
Miles: 65.7
Feet climbing per mile: 50
Record of the day's ride: https://ridewithgps.com/trips/221105502
I left the Rose Hotel planning to camp in Grand Rivers at Canal Campground which has a beach for swimming.
The highlight of the early part of the ride was taking the ferry across the Ohio River from Illinois into Kentucky. The ferry is a tugboat attached to a platform. It’s possible to change the orientation of the tugboat to the platform, but I don’t think the video shows that.
So ferry Cross the Ohio
And please do take me there
The place I’ll ride
For those of you who don’t get the reference, and for those of you who do and will enjoy hearing it:
I was on the Trans Am Bike Route for a substantial part of the previous day, and also this day when riding from the Rose Hotel to the ferry, while on the ferry, and for about a mile after leaving the ferry. For the rest of this trip I will not be on the Trans Am Bike Route. Instead I will follow, in reverse, much of the route I took for the first several weeks of my 4,500-mile trip in 2019.
As I left the Trans Am Bike Route I was on a road with little to no traffic and lots of tree cover. That would continue throughout most of the day.
About 15 miles into this ride I had the feeling that I needed a rest day. But hadn’t I just had rest days taking in Denver and Chicago? I realized that because of my lack of sleep on the train from Denver to Chicago and all the work I had to do in Chicago, that my previous true rest days were the three I had in Frisco before climbing Hoosier Pass. I decided that I would take a rest day at the campground to which I was headed.
About halfway through my ride I was attacked by four dogs that surrounded me. I hadn’t seen them until they were around me, so my response was chaotic. One of the dogs bit me on my left Achilles tendon. There was a little bleeding, but it quickly stopped when I rinsed it with water and applied a bandage. The owner apologized and told me the dogs all had their shots. Here is how wound the looked later after I put Polysporin on it.
I forgot to write in my post about the previous day that I saw four white medium-size dogs lying peacefully in the grass. They looked like they could be siblings. As I started to ride by them they got up and surrounded me, just like on the documentaries I’ve seen of animals who hunt in packs and are able to take down much larger prey. This time I came to a smooth stop which de-escalated the situation. I yelled at them to go home and then I took off.
In contrast to the bridge I had seen yesterday, I thought the Smithland Bridge over the Cumberland River was quite distinctive.
Sometimes the tree cover was complete.
I saw some cows walking home in a line. Earlier in the day I saw some cows run away as I rode past them. I yelled “Stampede! Stampede!”. I wonder whether they might have been steers, rather than cows.
Rain was forecasted to start in the evening but arrived a few hours ahead of schedule so a few miles before I would have arrived at the campground I was drenched. Furthermore my eyes were burning, maybe from my sweat and maybe from the rain itself. I was glad for the generous shoulder which allowed me to not have to deal with the traffic. I no longer had any interest in camping and was fortunate to find the Grand Rivers Inn where Veronika gave me a great deal on the room.
I ate across the street at Between The Lakes Tap House. After dinner I thoroughly enjoyed a midnight swim in the pool.
Before going to sleep I decided I would have a rest day at the Grand Rivers Inn.
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