Out on the tandem!

Saturday
The weekend was promising very pleasant temperatures, so we decided to make the most of it and go away for an overnight. I had read about a new (to us) bike trail, northeast of Columbus, the State Capital, which runs from Mount Vernon west to Centerburg, the geographic centre of the state, hence the trail’s name. We do a lot of cycling on our more local Little Miami trail, and it’s a great trail, but it’s always nice to have a change, and explore somewhere new. There are 19 bridges on the trail, of differing sorts and lengths, as it switches back and forth over the Dry Creek (which wasn’t dry!), which meanders on its way to the Kokosing River. The trail is about 15 miles in length, a bit too far for me to do the return on my own bike, so we took the tandem, which with our combined effort makes for a higher average speed, so less time in the saddle for a given distance! My blip shows me and the tandem in front of the marker denoting the highest point of the trail, 1285 ft, not particularly high, but then the highest point in the state is only 1550 ft! As we returned to the car, the trail passes Ariel Foundation Park, which we were going to stop and visit, but just as we stopped, Laura called us sounding a bit upset, so we chatted with her for a while, by which time more clouds had rolled in and it was about 5 pm, so we decided to leave the park for tomorrow, and continued to our Bed & Breakfast in Mount Gilead - we weren’t able to find any accommodation in Mount Vernon - it was all taken - apparently it was move-in week-end for nearby Kenyon College. The B&B proved to be very nice - I’ve put in an extra I rather liked of the evening sun falling on the porch swing. Later we found a good Mexican restaurant for dinner.