Day 16 – Painesville,OH to Westlake,OH

Date: 14.05.2018

Altitude: 2194.9 ft (669 m)

Distance: 66.62 mi (107.22 km)

Total Altitude: 33645.0 ft (10255 m)

Total Distance: 921.74 mi (1483.40 km)

Today I started into the third week on the bike. The last week has been just as good as the first week, although the weather still was an issue, especially late in the week. The second week had a quite a few highlights to offer, like the Niagara Falls and others. Lets hope, that the weather improves and the route stays as beautiful as it has been so far.

On today's route I was cycling through Cleveland and it's suburbs. I was really not looking forward to riding trough the city for the whole day. But it went way better than I thought, the route was really beautiful throughout the day and the traffic wasn't bad at all. What a nice surprise. It could have only been better, if the weather would have been better. Actually the day started out with some sun but as the day progressed, the clouds came in and about two hours into the trip it started raining heavily. It stayed like this for almost the rest of the day. The sun came out again, just before I finished for the day.

The scenery today was just gorgeous. Until I reached Lake Erie and the Lakeview Bikepath after about two-thirds of today's route, it was constantly green around me. I rode through quite a few parks in the city. Besides the parks I cycled through some nice neighborhoods, with some amazing houses along the way. I didn't expected that when I looked at the route. The first part of today's route, didn't follow the standard Northern Tier route, it followed the Heights Alternate route. I would recommend to anyone going on the Northern Tier, to follow the Heights Alternate, although it adds a few extra miles and a few climbs. After I got back onto the Northern Tier route, I followed the Lakeview Bikepath for a while. So I cycled for a while on a separate bike path right by the lake. After the stadium of the Cleveland Browns, the route left the lake for a while, but still went through some beautiful neighborhoods. It stayed like that until the end of the day.

Since today is my birthday, I decided to treat myself to a nice steak and a few beers for dinner. A perfect way to end a day, that had a lot to offer.

Conclusion for the day:

It's nice to get positively surprised sometimes.