Day 6, Pt.1 - The Point Where OH, IN, & MI Meet

The route for day six headed north-east from Auburn to the top right corner of Indiana, then south along the border between Indiana and Michigan until they arrive at Ohio, then south-east to the next overnight stop in Bryan, Ohio. My legs, which weren't really ready at the beginning of this trip, were finally starting to respond, which is important since the north-east corner of Indiana turned-out to have a lot of rolling hills... nothing huge, but with the gravel surfaces it took a bit of work to get to the tops.

Pic #1: A typical road in the top right corner of Indiana. Amish country! If you look closely you can see a buggy moving left down a driveway, and a pair of draft horses pulling a piece of farm equipment on the road ahead.






















Pic #2 thru #4: Curious cattle. When I stopped to take a pic of the steers on this farm, one noticed me and, being curious as cattle are, started walking over to see what I was and what I was doing. Other steer noticed and followed, and soon I had a hundred new friends milling about investigating my bike bags, gloves, helmet...





















































Pic #5: One of the steeper gravel climbs. Note the buggy tracks in the dusty surface.


























Pic #6: No fancy sign, just a change in the road surface where Indiana meets Michigan. The Indiana gravel roads were well-packed and fairly easy to ride, but the first road in Michigan proved to be more challenging...





















Pic #7: ...as it was mostly deep sand, the kind you'd find on river bank. In this view a car has just passed: you can see the cloud of dust kicked-up, and swerving bicycle tracks where I dabbed a few times before taking a short "breather". Luckily the road became asphalt after about a mile.

























Pic #8: Here's the marker acknowledging the point where Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan meet. It's about 130 feet North of the Ohio border. Of course, being a good Ohioan, I tried pushing it a little further north, thus increasing Ohio's territory, but the marker was a bit too heavy to budge.























Pic #9: You can clearly see where Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan meet. Looks just like my maps...





















Pic #10: I stopped for dinner a few miles inside the Ohio line. This was the view across the road. A large hawk, possibly a Red-Tail, was hunting low over the distant fields, swooping left and right, then gliding over to the next field. A gang of a couple dozen smaller birds where noisily hunting for early-evening insects in the fields around the cemetery were I'd stopped. Several times they passed just a couple feet over my head, or pulled tight turns right in front of me. It was a good air show.