3 states on the 4th

July 4, 2013

Pittsburgh, PA to Cadiz, OH

Happy July 4th!! We left Pittsburgh this morning on basically empty city streets because of the holiday--it was awesome! As always, the morning started out with a big climb to wake the legs up. It will be amazing the day we start off with a solid downhill instead. Almost right away we got onto a bike path in PA that would take us to West Virginia, about 30 miles west. Even though the path was a bit gravely, it was so nice not to have to worry about car traffic and bad roads. The path was also pretty cool. 

 

At lunch along the path, a man biking on the trail stopped to chat with us. He started giving us tips about what was ahead, such as mowers and large puddles of mud. He also mentioned that there was a rope swing if we stayed on the trail a bit longer than we were going to on the cue sheet. After lunch we made our way into West Virginia and when we got to the fork in the path where we could either continue on our way or go to the rope swing, I was the only one to go to the rope swing. Two groups had left before me to go to the rope swing, but I wasn't sure if they would still be there. The entire bike to the swing I was nervous that I either wouldn't find it or there would be nobody there. Luckily, I did find it and people were still there! I'm so happy I went--it's doing stuff like rope swinging in West Virginia that make this trip so awesome. I have pictures of the rope swing but not on my phone so they will be coming later.

 After the rope swing, we made our way to Ohio where we got a picture with the West Virginia state line and the bridge that spanned the Ohio River we walked over that turned into Ohio in the middle. 

Ohio was creepy when we first got there. Not many people were out, and the town we entered was clearly very impoverished. Moving closer to civilization, we saw more people out barbecuing for the 4th and playing country music--truly American. The hills were pretty steep on our way into Cadiz, OH so we were hot and exhausted by the time we got there. Also, since the town is so small, they didn't have any fireworks. Apparently there was a monster truck mud race that a few people went to, but I found my bed instead and went to sleep before most places even started setting off their fireworks. True bike and build problems.