John wanted to ride from Granville, up to Mt Vernon and then connect with various parts of the Ohio to Erie Bikeway. Our ending destination was Fredricksburg, some 49 miles away from Mt Vernon. I was only good for a century, so I drove up to Mt Vernon and met John there after he had already logged 30-40 morning miles. Just fine with me as the extra 2 hours would allow things to warm up just a little bit more. Our first section is about 12 miles of paved rail-to-trail called the Kokosing Gap Trail. This is an awesome trail with a couple of scenic highlights including pretty bridges, a retired steam locomotive, and this lovely old red building next to the stone tunnel pictured here. It looks like an old mill except I could see no waterworks nearby. But a very classic looking old building. This first section of trail ends in Danville OH.
Our next section is a brief piece of trail called the Mohican Valley Trail. It picks up right in Danville and extends for 4.5 miles toward Brinkhaven. This is a true dirt pathway and, in these spring conditions, was very soft and mushy. We got a good covering of mud on everything and, even on the cross bike, parts were a real slog in thick, muddy goo. The only memorable feature of this stretch is the "Bridge of Dreams" which is a 370 foot span crossing the Mohican River. Supposedly Ohio's longest covered bridge and the nation's second longest span. This bridge is in the distance of this photo. Don't let the gravel here fool you, it is only a 1/4 mile stretch; everything else on this path is mud. Since the Mohican Valley Trail is mostly unfinished, we now had an 18 mile road stretch to make it to Killbuck where the trail picks up again. There are big hills here; we had several long climbs that lasted multiple hundreds of feet which is fairly rare for Ohio. We weren't exactly expecting this, but the elevation was a nice change of pace from a long day of flat bikepath.
In Killbuck, you rejoin the trail as the Holmes County Trail. It is all paved and the unique feature is that there are separate trail lanes for horses and for bikes. Lots and lots of Amish live in this area and we passed a dozen or so horse drawn buggies on this stretch. You do have to keep your eyes open for the road apples. This section goes from Killbuck to Millersburg to Holmes to its terminus in Fredricksburg. John had business in Millersburg. He was after a new frameset and had looked up a bike shop in Millersburg. The shop was a few miles outside of town (away from the trail). It is run by Amish (who don't answer the phone). Since I was low on energy and needed badly to eat, and the shop was near closing time so John wanted to make time there, and this shop was up in the hills with several long steep climbs to get there, I skipped this part and parted ways with John. I figured he would catch up to me on the trail at some point since he is a faster rider than me. I snarfed a powerbar and sucked some go juice from the hydration pack before heading up the trail.
Today's ride was constantly characterized by a stiff headwind and bitter cold temps. The unusual NE wind blew right at us the whole way up. I sat on John's wheel till we split in Millersburg and then had to face the ferocity of the wind on my own. I had a thick base layer and then a riding jacket over top. I had lobster gloves on and alternated between putting bar mits on too or not. When you are only out for a few hours, you can kind of suck it up and be cold. But when you are out for a hundo, you need to be warm.
In Fredricksburg, which is heavily Amish, I found a small general store (run by Amish), parked my bike outside (between two Amish buggies), ate a sandwich (made by Amish) and then headed back. There was a decent tailwind push but it just didn't seem strong enough to make it "fair" for all the hardwork we logged to get there. About 3 miles back, I meet up with John who is still coming from his Millersburg bikeshop excursion. He wants to go to the terminus, so I shout out to him my route and expect him to catch up to me about half way back; that's 6 extra miles for him within a span of 49 -- yup, he should catch me. Except that between Killbuck and Danville I stick to Rte 62. It is more traffic, but it eliminates many of the climbs and bypasses the muddy Mohican Trail. So I make good time and end up beating John back to the car by 20 minutes. He also has to stop and refuel since he didn't stop in Fredricksburg.
A good long ride. I was tired but not wasted. Could have gone more if needed but didn't want to in that wind and cold. Cohutta is looking good but there is a huge difference between a hundred miles on mostly paved bike path and a hundred miles with tons of gravel road climbing. I had 97.4 miles, 3100 feet vertical, 16mph average, 145 bpm heartrate and 5001 calories.
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