Rain, rain, go away, come again another day… actually, it was fine. Due to the forecasted showers we decided to reroute out of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park since it has crushed limestone paths, which would be an absolute disaster of a mess if we were to ride through it. This reroute cut 8 miles off the day! Woohoo! We also got to ride through the Case Western Medical Reserve campus, which was genuinely quite beautiful.

We had some wild hills today, including one half mile 7% grade by our lunch rest stop that we didn’t have to climb (but some of us chose to… for fun..?!) Strava users beware, Jacob is coming for your hill records! Another reroute due to construction led us down a relatively empty forested road— very peaceful compared to the more urban riding we had done in the morning.

Willard, Maya, Rahul, and Andy came across the most adorable litter of kittens living in a barn with some cows. I wasn’t even there and it was one of the best things to come out of today. (Yes, there’s more photos!) Our stayover tonight is in the Ohio State Wooster campus arboretum building! It’s super cool and spacious, with a very large classroom type space and a huge dining table we could all sit around for dinner. We even got to use the projector to watch Napoleon Dynamite at the end of the evening :)

Two more days fully in Ohio; tomorrow we head to Zanesville, with showers and a chance of thunder— uh oh! Fingers crossed for a pleasant ride!

Until then!

— Marielle