Day 7 Layton to Lake Wallenpaupack

Wednesday 26th May
Daily mileage 35 miles Average Speed 9.3mph Ride Time 3hr42min

Hills and headwinds, the kind of conditions that do not make for easy riding. We were up at 6am to meet Tiffany who is Scott’s wife who was out last night. She kindly made us more pancakes with honey than we could eat and we had a great chat for an hour or so as we were all like minded. We cant thank you both enough for your generosity and good luck for your tandem ride!
We set off at 7.30am when it was still misty and cool. We had a lovely and easy ride for 10miles into Milford where we sat for 10mins on a bench for a breather. Back on the bikes the hard work began. The hills were bigger, longer and steeper. Yes they went down a bit but not before they had gone up a lot! Both Kris and I had the bike in the granny gear to tackle the climbs. Overall we had climbed a total elevation of 3,074 ft. Now Kris told me we were cycling USA from east to west so that it is flat from new york to the Rockies! I think not. We made it another 10 miles on where we came across a lake where sat and rested for a while. This was beautiful scenery, and really is God’s country. I could not relax as we were so far away from our bikes and we had walked far through forest I was on constant bear alert. We decided to crack on until we came across a garage where we rested in the shade with cool Pepsi and a roll. We stayed for an hour as it was the hottest part of the day. The sign at the garage said 94 degrees Fahrenheit. At 2pm we decided to hit the road to try make it to Hawley a further 8 miles or so.
However, we only just really left when we came across the biggest hill so far at which we both collapsed at the top in a mans garden that was selling cold coke from his trailer. We sat and chatted to him in the shade and he assured us that there was only one more big hill before Hawley. We took a nose at his lake that was from a spring and was tempted to crash there but the long grass put me off as we were told that deer ticks live in the grass so we forced ourselves to continue.
We definitely climbed more than one more hill before we came across lake Wallenpaupack and almost threw our bikes to the ground as we ran to the lake and jumped straight in. It was beautiful and felt so so good. After cooling down we put the tent up, showered and a quick market trip we were back to the lake to watch the sunset over the lake. Awesome, this is what its all about.