Xenia

9-9-14
47 Miles
72 Total Miles

I didn’t sleep that well last night, not used to the hard ground. The morning was foggy and misty, enough to make it difficult to see through my glasses. Industrial buildings would materialize out of the fog, like giant icebergs on the Atlantic.

Sean is not feeling well today. He is dehydrated and physically exhausted. We are making several stops to rest and re-hydrate. We are going heading to Xenia to get some food and hopefully find a place to crash.

Xenia, Ohio is odd. First, we made a wrong turn and started down the wrong trail. We wanted to be on trail one, which is the Ohio to Erie trail, but we ended up on trail four, which took us 3 Miles out of our ways to Jefferson-ville (or something). That is when a woman dressed in military fatigue stepped out of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere, smiling and waving, which seemed strange and took us be surprise. She was a major according to her insignia and was nice. A little farther down the trail, she noticed us looking perplexed, staring at a sign and wondering where we went wrong, and she was kind enough to give us directions to Cleveland, unfortunately we were headed towards Cincinnati.

Later, when we backtracked to Xenia, we unfortunately decided to rest at the train station. Why was that unfortunate, you might ask? Because some poor, twisted individual, decided to ride up to us on his bicycle wearing nothing but loose fitting shorts and what do you know, he completely exposed himself to us. It would have been a little better if he had not made it a point to show himself to us on purpose! Idiot! I looked twice because I couldn’t believe he did that.

Okay we escaped Xenia and decided to head further south for a place to stay. I tried to call a place called Frontier Campground, but nobody answered. We pushed on, hoping it would be there and be open. As we went down the trail, we started to notice that not every road crossing on this trail has a road sign, making it difficult to know where you actually are, especially with no cellphone signal. My hotspot is going into my easy grab bag. When I was finally starting to get irritated, a guy run up to us out of nowhere and gave us a heads up on a shortcut through the woods saving us Miles to get to the camp. It was there, but not easy to get through the pathway with two touring bikes and a B.O.B. Trailer. On the other side was a pond that reminded me of Camp Crystal from the Friday the 13th movies. We pushed on and up a hill to be disappointed at seeing by a trailer park and finally exhilarated at seeing a working campground. On the door was a Gadsden Flag, “Don’t tread on Me”, and an emergency number. I felt very good about this – a fellow rebel. I called the number, and a man came to answer our prayers. We had a site and warm showers! We decided to rest there a couple of nights to let our bodies adjust to being abused.