Day 32: Holland to Marshall MI

I hung out with the fast crowd again for the first part of today's 91 mile ride to Marshall.  The group is willing, out of respect (or pity) for my age to let me loiter at the back of the line and it certainly helped to be with a large group as we left Holland with heavy early morning traffic and a complicated set of turns before gettting out into the open countryside.  At about 23 miles the group accelerated from their initial 18-20mph which caused me to immediately decelerate to my normal 15-16mph pace. 

I soloed for the rest of the day through nice rolling farmland, but with considerably more trees than in the farm country of Iowa.  I came across this pretty little church as I pedaled along.

The overall ride was quite pleasant, helped my near perfect weather, and I hopefully finished with plenty of "fuel in the tank" for the big rides of the next few days.  

Marshall is a town of about 7000 population and is known as a "virtual textbook of 19th-Century American architecture". I didn't get to see the town pedaling in, but we are being shuttled to dinner tonight to Schulers restaurant and I hope to see some of the town in the process.

 The next two days are the two highest mileage days of the trip - 120 miles tomorrow to get to Rossford OH (near Toledo) and then 127 miles the next day to get to Cleveland.  We are certainly going to have to earn our Day 35 rest day in Cleveland.  The weather forecast looks great except for some modest to moderate easterly headwinds coming off of Lake Erie. (Note - we have had only one or two days with a "W" in the wind direction since somewhere back in Wyoming.)

The combination of the sun not rising until almost 7:30am and the high mileage will likely result in late arrival times the next two days.  Don't be surprised if their are no blog posts until my rest day on Saturday. 

Steve