Today was a mixture of city riding, country riding, trail riding and road riding. A nice variation that brought me just across the Indiana state line.

I was on the road just before sunrise. Not because I am starting earlier but as I’ve gone further west, sunrise is later and I didn’t completely adjust.

The first third was mostly trails and within a mile, I was on a quiet trail heading from Xenia to Dayton. There were early morning joggers and dog walkers as well.

I found this twisted iron in Beaver Creek. It is steel from the World Trade Center as part of a well-done memorial for 9/11.

Here is the sign that explains it and how Beaver Creek applied to create the memorial.

The trail went parallel to the highway so I could see their warning signs. The National Weather Service has an alert and national news makes it a big story for places like New York City. Wildfires in Eastern Canada are causing poor air. Other than these alerts I didn’t notice anything.

Just as I get going, another trail closed but this time with detour signs so I followed them.

There were five or six twists and turns but each had a sign.

This brought me to this smooth path that followed the river through downtown Dayton. Made it all easy riding.

Three different long distance walking trails noted: BuckeyeTrail.org, NorthCountryTrail.org and American Discovery Trail.

Another example of how the trail goes underneath existing bridges to make it easier to cross than places like Columbus where many of these were crossings with signals.

The quote for today is about dreams and is from under a bridge in Dayton.

Leaving Dayton I came through a somewhat run down area. There were some buildings boarded up. It was unclear if this drive thru was open, not on a Thursday morning and perhaps not in a while? The sidewalk started as a trail but a mixture of glass, untrimmed shrubs and rough cracks had me pick the road instead. That worked fine since there also wasn’t much traffic. All gave me an impression of a blighted area but also without many people.

At 25 miles I reached the corporate limits of Dayton. I cycled some roads like this as well as another seven miles of the Wolf Creek rail trail.

Brookfield town center at my finish of the trail.

I was on rural roads with almost no traffic after that.

The road kept getting smaller until surprise it said “one lane bridge” with this nice covered bridge. After the bridge, the road didn’t get wider.

My tiny road had some twists and turns until it ended parallel to Interstate 70 with many trucks. I couldn’t help contrast the difference between my little covered bridge road and traffic zooming past. In the far distance at the next exit is a truck stop where I had lunch before finding different little roads for the rest of the ride.

Another spot on this road someone had put together an elaborate memorial to Olivia.

The last miles were remote rural roads until I crossed the border into Indiana. There was no sign at the border but cars parked at a few houses now had Indiana license plates.

There is a contrast between where I entered and exited Ohio. Perhaps that first impression from Northeast Ohio (rude drivers, no shoulders) wouldn’t have tarred my impression of the state where I exited (quiet roads, some shoulders, no rude driver encounters). In any case, the other surprising thing about my last week crossing Ohio is how much was spent cycling various long rail trails instead of roads.

Strava says: 57.26 miles in 6:25:50 for 8.9 miles/hour. A total of 1352 feet climbed and 3411 calories burned. Today I celebrate my 13th state and my 20th Patel motel.

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