Found the climb
Brrr. We also seem to have found fall weather. Or what seems to me to be winter weather. The lows were in the high 30s last night, the highs eventually reached the mid-50s, so I rode with almost all my layers almost all day. I guess that's going to happen soon at home, too. But it was beautifully sunny.
So we ran across a couple on the Honker trail who told us we really should visit Gray County State Park, it's famous for the fall colors, so maybe be prepared for crowds. So here we are. We drove up to Nashville (not THAT one - there's also one in Indiana, and as it happens, one in Illinois. Who knew?) yesterday on a gloomy day. We are staying in a nice local motel with a super friendly staff. But the walls are paper thin and we had neighbors last night...Two women (one happened to announce in her penetrating voice that she was 74) seemed to be playing poker, and the louder one was not doing well. She offered a continuous stream of comments to her pal, very little of which I could include here if I ever want my grandchildren to read it. Fortunately (perhaps the 74 years served us well) all we heard after dinner was some loud-ish TV, soon followed by silence. At least until this morning when our neighbor broadcast her weather observations as they packed up and checked out. Somehow, I am quite happy to hear the kids' running steps above us this evening.
In spite of what I started out saying today, we have been pretty lucky with weather. The rain has almost all happened either at night or on a rest/travel day, and after the first few bike days when it was quite hot, most of our days have been in the 60s and 70s, just about perfect. Even today, we decided to wait until the outside temps reached about 50, and although it was easy to feel the chill, it was also easy to dress warmly enough to feel fine as we rode.
This turns out to be another one of those local spots that no one from out of the area knows and everyone around here just loves. The park is the largest of the Indiana state parks. We covered just about every inch of road in it and rode over 20 miles. We only skipped the little roads off to the campgrounds. And there are campgrounds, randomly scattered picnic tables, playgrounds. a nature center with some taxidermied local creatures and a few live snakes and turtles, plus a little room with one way glass where you can look out at a bunch of very popular bird feeders. There's a lodge with rocking chairs on the porch, a stable where you can take a horseback ride, tennis courts, a swimming pool, mountain bike trails, a rickety metal fire/observation tower you can climb if you choose, a little convenience store for the campers. It was maybe the best pavement I have ever ridden on. There was one area on one of the main roads that had the occasional bump or crack, but for miles on the less direct road, we just floated along. Well, when I say float, I mean we didn't have any jarring. But we did have some hills. We didn't exactly float up those.
The interpretive sign says that glaciers once covered the area and left behind some areas that had been gouged out, and others that had remained, which left Indiana with some steep little hills. We found no reason to doubt the reasoning; the result was in plain sight. So as smooth as the roads were, we climbed over 2000' in about 25 miles. Almost like home. Or rather, not so much like home. Our roads are full of switchbacks, or carefully graded to climb relatively slowly. We think of steep as maybe 10%, with occasional ramps up to 12 or so; here we made our way up several ramps of 14-15% and one that was at least 18, maybe even 20. Those made the chill in the air pretty welcome, actually.
The fall colors are just getting going. There was an occasional area where the particular type of trees had all turned bright yellow, and some areas of red (I don't know - ask Bruce), and almost all of our riding was through deciduous woods. We found two little lakes (no birds on either of them), visited the nature center, stopped at some view points, and headed back to bathe before going into Nashville for dinner. It is a thriving tourist town with lots of choices. And it's getting busier today - good thing we weren't here trying to ride those roads on a weekend. We had a great dinner last night and another tonight. In fact, I intend to stay here until lunch time tomorrow before heading out to what we originally thought would be our first destination: Indiana Dunes, the newest national park. We plan to spend our last three nights in that area before heading back to Chicago Monday to pack up and head home Tuesday.
So we ran across a couple on the Honker trail who told us we really should visit Gray County State Park, it's famous for the fall colors, so maybe be prepared for crowds. So here we are. We drove up to Nashville (not THAT one - there's also one in Indiana, and as it happens, one in Illinois. Who knew?) yesterday on a gloomy day. We are staying in a nice local motel with a super friendly staff. But the walls are paper thin and we had neighbors last night...Two women (one happened to announce in her penetrating voice that she was 74) seemed to be playing poker, and the louder one was not doing well. She offered a continuous stream of comments to her pal, very little of which I could include here if I ever want my grandchildren to read it. Fortunately (perhaps the 74 years served us well) all we heard after dinner was some loud-ish TV, soon followed by silence. At least until this morning when our neighbor broadcast her weather observations as they packed up and checked out. Somehow, I am quite happy to hear the kids' running steps above us this evening.
In spite of what I started out saying today, we have been pretty lucky with weather. The rain has almost all happened either at night or on a rest/travel day, and after the first few bike days when it was quite hot, most of our days have been in the 60s and 70s, just about perfect. Even today, we decided to wait until the outside temps reached about 50, and although it was easy to feel the chill, it was also easy to dress warmly enough to feel fine as we rode.
This turns out to be another one of those local spots that no one from out of the area knows and everyone around here just loves. The park is the largest of the Indiana state parks. We covered just about every inch of road in it and rode over 20 miles. We only skipped the little roads off to the campgrounds. And there are campgrounds, randomly scattered picnic tables, playgrounds. a nature center with some taxidermied local creatures and a few live snakes and turtles, plus a little room with one way glass where you can look out at a bunch of very popular bird feeders. There's a lodge with rocking chairs on the porch, a stable where you can take a horseback ride, tennis courts, a swimming pool, mountain bike trails, a rickety metal fire/observation tower you can climb if you choose, a little convenience store for the campers. It was maybe the best pavement I have ever ridden on. There was one area on one of the main roads that had the occasional bump or crack, but for miles on the less direct road, we just floated along. Well, when I say float, I mean we didn't have any jarring. But we did have some hills. We didn't exactly float up those.
The interpretive sign says that glaciers once covered the area and left behind some areas that had been gouged out, and others that had remained, which left Indiana with some steep little hills. We found no reason to doubt the reasoning; the result was in plain sight. So as smooth as the roads were, we climbed over 2000' in about 25 miles. Almost like home. Or rather, not so much like home. Our roads are full of switchbacks, or carefully graded to climb relatively slowly. We think of steep as maybe 10%, with occasional ramps up to 12 or so; here we made our way up several ramps of 14-15% and one that was at least 18, maybe even 20. Those made the chill in the air pretty welcome, actually.
The fall colors are just getting going. There was an occasional area where the particular type of trees had all turned bright yellow, and some areas of red (I don't know - ask Bruce), and almost all of our riding was through deciduous woods. We found two little lakes (no birds on either of them), visited the nature center, stopped at some view points, and headed back to bathe before going into Nashville for dinner. It is a thriving tourist town with lots of choices. And it's getting busier today - good thing we weren't here trying to ride those roads on a weekend. We had a great dinner last night and another tonight. In fact, I intend to stay here until lunch time tomorrow before heading out to what we originally thought would be our first destination: Indiana Dunes, the newest national park. We plan to spend our last three nights in that area before heading back to Chicago Monday to pack up and head home Tuesday.
Bruce's comment: For a guy who thinks deciduous trees are a rare treat, this was the park for me. The sky was crisp blue, the colors sharp, and the ever changing layers of trees kaleidoscopic.
ReplyDeleteI liked it so much that I drove back the next day to revisit the nature center and visit a tree that had seed pods that seemed very strange to me. With help from a photo of a visual key taken at the nature center and iNaturalist, I found out that the pods were hops, and the tree was Hop Hornbeam, a kind of ironwood, also known as Blue Beech. Very cool!