Day 59 - Old Saybrook to Plainfield - Two Far 2022 - Reunion Bound (the long way around)

June 14, 2022

Day 59 - Old Saybrook to Plainfield

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We left Old Saybrook this morning by riding on the bike/pedestrian path along I-95. It was completely separated from the traffic and had this protective metalwork on the river side. I got a bit of a last view of the Connecticut River for this trip.

The Connecticut River as seen through the pedestrian walkway grate.

The big event of today was a big climb. There is a 1.25 mile section of Grassy Hill Road which climbs over 350 feet. Five miles into our ride, we turned onto Grassy Hill Road. It is very scenic with heavily wooded lots and lovely homes.

Rogers Lake was on the left for the first mile or so. We saw many signs in yards opposing the "RLA" and a plan to make the lake a no-wake zone. We guessed that RLA is Rogers Lake Association and has the power to set such rules if this is a private lake. The same issue is common on many privately owned lakes in Florida.

We did a combination of pedaling and pushing to get up the big climb. According to Ride with GPS, the grade topped out at 11.4%. Our Garmins usually register a steeper grade than what Ride with GPS predicts. Neither of us even looked at the Garmins during the steepest parts - we were too busy working on getting to the top!

We rode past this dairy farm today - we both smelled it before it came into view. This is the first dairy farm we remember seeing in Connecticut.

The route took us through what seemed like an old downtown section of Norwich. The area we went through didn't look very prosperous.

I'm not usually drawn to churches, but this one is really beautiful. It's the Church of Saint Mary

In an area of large estate homes, we saw this park area. There was nothing to indicate it was a public park or recreation area, so we guessed it was part of someone's private property.

Right at the end of the ride with under three miles to go, we had a quite unusual experience.

Just after we turned on this road, there was a sign which said "Road Closed, no through traffic". Of course, we all know that such verbiage never discourages Kerry, so on we rode until we got to this.

Kerry walked past the barrels and barricade and decided we could probably get through.

But, that wasn't to be. After trudging through the rocks and sand, it was clear that the road was really, truly, completely closed. One of the workers told us about an easy detour, so we had to turn around and go back to the main road.

The detour was very short and we were soon at the hotel. It was a challenging ride in places today, but overall not as bad as I was afraid it would be. Tomorrow we finish our miles in Connecticut and enter Massachusetts.

Today's ride: 44 miles (71 km)
Total: 2,035 miles (3,275 km)

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