October 1-2, 2018. The Start of a New Adventure.

Those who know me well know also that I have just three states to go to achieve my goal of bicycling across (or nearly so) all 50 states. We left Michigan yesterday morning to ride the last 3 states: Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware.

We met at our house at 7:30 AM. Dennis designed and bought the shirts this time. The first photo shows the riders leaving from here: Dennis, me, Diana, Tom and Fred. We will meet our final rider (Dianne from FL) at Mystic, CT on Thursday. The second photo shows our support team: my husband Bill and Fred's wife Doris. We could not do this without them!

We drove all day, stopping at Utica, NY for the night. This morning we drove three hours to get to Norfork, CT, where we unloaded the bikes and started riding. It was lightly misting when we got on the bikes.

Diana had planned a road route with a large number of turns... Bill and I tried asking our phones to give us a bike route from Norfork to Windsor Locks, CT, about 44 miles. We liked the elevation profile of the route that showed up (early hills, followed by many miles of downhill riding) so we decided to use it. HOWEVER we did not know it included unpaved roads. The first one we we were routed onto was beautiful.

It rained a little bit and the next dirt road we were routed onto became the road not taken--it was rocky and muddy, so we stayed on the paved road. We realized after we made that choice that we now had to climb a big hill--the big difference in the elevation profile was the hill we rode anyway!

We also were routed onto the Farmington River Rail Trail, which was a welcome relief from the traffic.

We were back on the road for a little while--every time we were on the road we saw our support crew watching out for us. They could not see us on the trails. We rode another trail through a Stratton Brook State Park, where we saw the covered bridge.

By the time we exited the state park and got into Simsbury it was raining in earnest and there were tornado warnings.  Bill and Doris were waiting for us at the trailhead and we loaded the bikes and drove the rest of the way to our hotel. It is supposed to rain heavily the rest of the day. Total miles in CT today: 33.