Mt. Gilead to Marion

I camped overnight at the Mt. Gilead State Park on the west side of Mt. Gilead. It was a great campground for my purposes.  I camped near the entrance.  I set up my tent, shown here minus the rain fly, in the late afternoon heat.  A fellow camper, who turned out to be from Lexington, helped me move the picnic table into the shade.  I found the shower house and got cleaned up to relax, and wrote a bit of the blog posts. 

 

In the morning, I rode into Mt. Gilead and ate breakfast at a coffee shop called Sames and Cook.  It was very homey, with crocheted napkin holders on the 1950's style kitchen table, and a small vignette in the window with armchair seating conversation area. 

This is a fantastic place for a leisurely breakfast and I was able to use their wifi to upload some photos. I ordered off-menu, my usual breakfast of plain oatmeal, lettuce and salad vegetables, and two eggs over easy and coffee with a shot of expresso and almond milk.   

The roads were better today.  No gravel.  Hard surface.  Flat.  I thought I would make good time.

But before I even got out of town, one of my straps from the pannier came loose and got tangled up in the chain and I had to stop and get it out.  The chain was thrown and I had to open up my toolbox to find something to pry the links out between the chain ring and the frame.   Eventually I got it back on and proceeded through Edison and on towards Marion. 

It was 90 degrees by afternoon and I was riding right into a headwind.  The wind is sometimes called "the invisible hill".  I started singing to myself "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!"  I made better time than the day before, but every time I hit a patch of shade, which was not often,  I stopped to rest and take a drink.  So my overall time was still very poor.   I expected to arrive by 11:00, having looked at the map which indicated a slight downhill slope all the way.  I did not arrive at Stitch and Skein in Marion until 2:30. 

After my visit at the yarn store, I crossed the street to Amato's Wood Fired Pizza.  I order a shrimp salad and garic bread, which was fantastic.  The people were great, they let me roll my bike inside next to my table and made sure my water bottle was filled before I left.  I called my husband and asked him to come and take me to the campground 40 miles away, as I knew I did not have it in me to ride another 40 miles before dark.  After looking at the weather forecast, though, I made a different decision.  I decided to come home for the night and take my car to Columbus tomorrow.  Then I can visit several of the spots I wanted to in air-conditioned comfort of my car while the heat and humidity build up to a forecasted thunderstorm.  I'll park my car at my sister's in Columbus and start again tomorrow when the weather is supposed to be better.