Hello Lake Erie! There has not been a more favorable site then leaving the dry corn fields and watching as the blue green lake appear to our North. I have been looking forward to this massive body of water since we left the Mississippi River in Iowa. We followed the North Coast Inland Trial that took us just south of Sandusky. We debated about whether we should take a day and go to Cedar Point. As good as roller coasters sound, the terrifying excitement of biking through our first major city of Cleveland pulled us east. Like all good Midwestern states, Ohio did not fall short in its detours. We followed the lake road for as long as we could, until a detour led us on I-90. The construction worker told us it was only a 3-mile detour after we had asked him if we could just walk our bikes across the bridge that was under construction. The worker said he couldn’t let us pass and that we could easily just follow the detour. We circled back and followed the orange detour sign that led us up onto the Highway. I know it is illegal to ride on the highway in Ohio, but from the look of the road, it was going to be less than a mile before we could get off onto the next exit. We decided to follow the signs and not chance getting lost in the corn fields. The highway had a wide shoulder and rumble strip and we biked as hard as we could to what we thought was the next exit. It turned out, that what we were seeing, was just an overpass with no on or off ramp. So we had to keep going. We passed four more overpasses with no way to get off. We now were debating whether we should try and climb the huge sides of the overpasses to get off, but we would first have to climb over the fences that barricaded them. After eight miles, the all too familiar siren sounded and we slowed as the cop approached us. The police officer was very nice and informed us we needed to get off the highway as soon as possible. First, however he would need to run our licensees. At this point, Matt felt the need to warn the officer that their might be bells and whistles that go off when he enters his name, and began to tell the long story of being pulled over in North Dakota. After a few minutes the officer came back and said we were all in the clear! We high tailed it to the next exit and was able to rejoin the Northern Tier. After a long day, we ended the day in Bay Village.
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