Grand Lake St. Marys
Thursday, October 10, 1996 - Time out 9:20 AM, 47°
The rain ended yesterday, but it was still cold and cloudy today. The road was fantastic today. The shoulders ranged from 2' - 8' and the traffic stayed relatively light. The 18 wheelers remained courteous.
Celina is on a large (once the largest) man-made lake: Grand Lake St. Marys. The lake is shallow and the town of Celina seems to be on the decline.
I love seeing lighthouses, but a lighthouse on a man-made lake seems a bit ridiculous. There was one on Grand Lake.
We picked up a bit of tailwinds today and I actually found myself pulling away from Ritt at 20 mph.
Out in the middle of farm fields, we came upon what appeared to be a monastery or convent of huge proportions. Isn't Carthagena Columbia's cocaine capital? Am I still in Ohio?
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I took a picture of a set of railroad tracks we crossed
and a house near there that showed some Ohio poverty.
The windows in the house were broken, but note the trampoline in the back yard. It was clearly occupied. I never cease to be amazed by the priorities of people, Wouldn't you fix the broken windows before you spend a lot of money on a trampoline? I'll bet they have cable tv or even a DSS dish, and some sort of video game system too.
We passed through the delightful Darke County town of Greenville.
This was my first experience riding a bicycle around a traffic circle. I enjoyed it. We rode to the Garst Museum where there were exhibits devoted to two famous local people: Annie Oakley and Lowell Thomas.
To me, the most amazing item at the Garst Museum was Lawrence of Arabia's actual Arabian clothing, brought back to the United States by Lowell Thomas.
As I expected, there was a case full of guns used by Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill:
and in the back yard was Lowell Thomas' house:
Greenville had a gorgeous courthouse building.
Later, we passed an ostrich farm.
.As we crossed I-70, it became apparent that we were not going to reach Hamilton, our destination, some 50 miles away. We asked several people about motels in towns 20-30 miles south and learned that there were none, so we decided to stop there for the night, despite riding only 54 miles for the day.
54 miles.
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© Ed Noonan 1996, 1997