Uncle John's Pennslyvania Pavilion

07/18/09 - Day nine, and it was a pretty good day. We managed about 70 miles and did it in record time. The rain stopped shortly before we got on the road and by early afternoon we even had some sun. It may end up raining again tonight but we are now snug in our campsite, so we don’t care. In fact, we have such a good campsite that it won’t even matter. The owner of the campground, Uncle John, told us we could set up under a pavilion so that we would be under cover in case the weather got bad. He was a really nice guy and let us put up both of our tents, which would normally run $50, for $30. We have two tents because we are still traveling with J.D. Unfortunately, tomorrow we have to part ways with J.D. as his route takes him south and we continue west. It has been nice having a third person to hurl himself at the incessant head wind with us. J.D. said this afternoon that riding with us for the last few days has been really good for his morale. I can see how your motivation to ride your bike for 12 months could wane after riding for three weeks by yourself. Mostly in the rain. The weather is really crazy, the temps barely got above 65 degrees today and with the 20 mph wind off the lake, it was cold. But at least it was dry. This is he second campground we have been in that the owner has told us that he basically doesn’t care about his summer business because he makes all of his money in the winter. Kind of like Basin Sports. I didn’t mention it in the earlier post but the campground that we stayed at on my birthday, Joe’s place, was on the Tug-Hill plateau, an area familiar to all snowmobile enthusiasts. It is a destination for snow machiners, as we call them in the 802, because it is a high area immediately east of Lake Ontario and as such it always gets tons of snow. 540 inches of snow last year. That puts it about on par with Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. Except that the max elevation is 1800 feet and there isn’t much vertical relief. Cool facts though right? And what is the draw for Uncle John’s campground? It sits right at the mouth of the Elk River, a world famous Steelhead fishery. So Uncle John is merely amused at our wanting to set up our little tents on his spot here in Lake City PA. We had one notable encounter today, we had stopped for J.D. to take a photo of the Welcome to Pennsylvania sign and a guy comes walking up with his dog. He asks us all of the usual questions (where did you start, where are you going, how long will it take, how many miles a day, etc.) and then he notices the scar on my leg and asks, “what happened to your knee, too much biking?” To which I reply “no, too much getting hit by cars while riding my bike.” Which then causes him to reply that a lot of his friends back home tell him that they would like to hit cyclists with their cars because they don’t think bikes should be on the road. I was going to say “yeah, I live in VT and am surrounded by lots of ignorant people too,” but I decided against it. Again with the people wanting to kill you for doing something they don’t like. Like “99% of rednecks surveyed said they would definitely buy a tag if cyclist hunting season were introduced.” Oh well, what are you going to do, other than hope that you don’t run into that guys friends. Oh yeah, and we have been riding the last two days through wine country. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true, both New York and PA have these wine trail deals where you can tour the various vineyards. I don’t know what varietals they grow here, but we did pass a sign that said Concord Grape Country, so I’m not too optimistic about the wines. There were some really fantastic views though, looking out over the vineyards and down to Lake Erie. I realized today, by the way, that I have been spelling Lake Erie wrong for the last few days. So stupid.

A.M. update - We had a couple of serious storms come through last night and we were very glad to be set up under the pavilion. No thunder and lightning, just heavy, heavy rain. Marc and I thought that a beer sounded good so we walked up to a convenience store that we had seen on the way into the campground. It was a the top of a really big hill. It was also a bait store, as it turned out. Unfortunately, they didn’t sell beer. I’ve never seen anything like it. So we each got a root beer and then ate an entire bag of Tostitos and a jar of salsa instead. Before dinner. I forgot to mention the other night that when we camped in Canada I had a harrowing experience with a skunk. I had been at the laundry room updating my journal and when I came back to the site, I set my computer on the picnic table and got busy organizing my stuff to go to bed. When I went to grab my stuff off of the table, I was confronted by a little skunk, sitting right under the table. I really wanted to go to bed but I didn’t want to upset the skunk and get sprayed so I waited for a while, but it didn’t seem like it was going to go anywhere. So then I retreated to the next site over and tried tossing pine cones at the little critter. That didn’t do any good. Finally, after about ten minutes the skunk got bored and wandered off. After I got in bed and started reading, I heard something brush up against the tent fly and it startled me so I jumped to the side and basically landed on top of Marc. It turned out to be my water bottle falling over. I think I heard that skunk laughing.