My turn

"Looks like you'll be riding into rain," said our host as we pulled out in the morning. That was fairly consistent with the tone of the place. It was run down, although everything was very clean, and obviously a lot of treasured objects filled every room. At dinner, though, our hostess had made it quite clear that she could not wait to retire: "Oh, how I would love to spend the winter in Tahiti!" "You should go with Joe," said her agreeable spouse. "No! I want to be all by myself. To go to sleep when I like, to get up whenever I choose. Aaaah."

So it was not altogether surprising to hear comments at breakfast - get good mattresses to withstand heavy guests, that sort of thing. I doubt she saw the irony, though, in the fact that her stream of complaints - how bad things have gotten in her homeland thanks to hordes of foreigners, and she was broad-minded enough to list the seemingly all-inclusive nationalities soiling her heritage - was delivered in what, to us at least, was rather a strong foreign accent.

Talk about the wrong line of work!

However, we felt not a drop of rain, and no foreigners or natives tried to steal our bikes or sell us anything dubious. Or anything at all, actually. We were having quite a nice ride when...I got yet another flat. I guess that's at least partly because of the amount of traffic. More broken glass, more wiry bits from tires. We changed the tube & went on. Last night I replaced the rather worn front tire in hopes that the older one's long life was contributing to the wave of tire-changing practice.

Our arrival at Crossroads Inn & Cabins could not have contrasted more dramatically with the night before if it had been carefully planned. Tanya (I could be a bit off on the name) came out to greet us as we rolled in. She gave us each a fancy sugar cookie she had made, decorated and wrapped, along with very nice pens with the inn's name on them. Bruce had called her to find out about local dinner options; there really aren't any, at least on Mondays, so she questioned us carefully to be sure we were ok. We were - we had a big lunch and brought sandwich-makings along for dinner. She seemed almost sad she would not be able to make us breakfast. She let us do our laundry. Definitely one of the best.

The only missing piece was cell service or WiFi. That's why this is a day late. But we were on a lovely lake. There were huge, threatening clouds covering half the sky with the sun shining brightly from the other half. The light on the lake and surrounding woods was very dramatic. An osprey perched on a tree showed its starkly contrasting dark & light colors.

We had both begun to feel we were in very different territory as we rode in. The mountains, not high, but decidedly wilder, the rushing streams, the increasing chance there would be a lake just through the trees. Great riding.

Miles ridden: 61
Total miles so far: 3799