Day 6: Cuyahoga Valley National Park 42km
Monday, August 28
Sunny with a few clouds. 24C
Today we drove to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park to do our ride. The trail is part of the Ohio to Erie Trail that goes from The Ohio River in Cincinnati to Lake Erie in Cleveland. This section of the trail follows the Cuyahoga River and the old Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath – which was constructed in the 1830s as a means to transport both passengers and goods. The towpath spanned 308 miles and had 152 locks.
The trail is in good shape and is paved in some sections and gravel dust in others. The river valley provides a lot of shade as well as shelter from the wind, and although we were riding upstream, the elevation change was barely noticeable.
There are all sorts of places to stop along the way and we took advantage of the amenities at Boston Mill. Bathrooms, water refills, and a general store with ice cream kept us in top form.
At Lock 29 in Peninsula we saw the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad Train pulling intothe station. Something we wanted to do was to take our bikes on the train, but it only operates from Wednesday through Sunday. The surprise appearance of the train today went unexplained. We didn’t see any passengers on board so perhaps it was a training run?
We stopped for a picnic lunch at Deep Lock Quarry and spread out our food on a bench beside the trail. After we ate, we took a short side trip up a trail to see the old quarry where a lot of the stone used to build the canals was quarried. Duncan had fun working the self-timer on his camera to capture our group photo at the quarry.
After lunch we turned around and pedalled back to the car at the Canal Exploration Center. We stopped at a roadside market stand to buy some corn and tomatoes before driving back into Cleveland. We had a nice meal, this time in the dining room of the infamously historic house that we are staying in.
eimajeyn 
Looks like it was a good day!