Last night was absolutely crazy. The thunder and rain started at about 7:30, just before I made dinner. Fortunately, I moved all our food preparation stuff to a covered picnic table near the showers. The rain stopped at about 10 pm, when we made our way down to the tent for the night … but there was an occasional grumbling of thunder and a lot wind. So much so, that I decided to sleep with earplugs in! I woke up shortly before midnight and all was well. Then the thunder and lightning show started in earnest. The storm lasted a full 4 hours! It was crazy non-stop downpour with thunder (a few times really close) and constant flashes of lightning. It made for a night of very little sleep.
At 7 am, we dragged ourselves out of bed. We knew the weather was due to heat up, but couldn’t get up sooner do to the lack of sleep because of the storm. We also had to deal with a wet tent and wet laundry (I had hung a bunch of stuff on the line last night – oops). It took us until 10:45 to eat, pack up and do yoga. The day was not beginning well.
The heat and humidity was intense. Not even a slight breeze was to be found. At noon, I called a stop at a small roadside restaurant and we sat inside air-conditioning, having lunch, and resting until 2 pm. By 2 pm, we were getting bored, so we hopped back on the bikes and began the slog towards Oswego. About an hour after lunch we decided that Oswego would be our stop for the night, rather than just stopping for an hour or two to update email and then continue riding.
Stopping in Oswego turned out to be a good decision. By the time we arrived, my decision making abilities were questionable. That is how I get when I’m tired, I don’t always make the best decisions. When my mind starts to get slow I know it is time to stop. The distance markers in the US give me the opportunity to test my wits. My GPS (and my bodies understanding of distances) is all in kilometers, so I need to do some math to figure out how much further I need to go. When that math starts to get too slow, I know we should be stopping for a rest!
In the end, we stopped at the first hotel we saw – a Days Inn. It was a little expensive from our budget perspective, and pretty run down; but the room was air conditioned, and at 6 pm, all I wanted was to be in someplace cold! If we want to camp when it is this warm, we need to stop earlier in the day.