Day 0 - Getting ready

Our Big adventure began right after our 8^th annual fundraiser for the Kassel Smit Make a Difference Fund (which was a tremendous success, thank you to everyone !)

We loaded up the RV with the jeep in tow with all our bike stuff, Theresa's Mom, her sisters Dorothy and Mary Jean and Zin. We were on the road by 6AM and rolled into Theresa's Brother's area around 2pm. We spent Father's day thru that Wed there at his place called 'Hardalee' near Cambridge, MD on the Chesapeake Bay and enjoyed Crab, fresh fish, seeing his family and helping out with some house repairs. On Thursday we headed North to Niagara Falls. Theresa's Mom, Helen Blaisdell, has always wanted to see the Falls! It was spectacular and a wonderful way to share her 91^st b-day! We all did 2 days of tours both the American side and the Canadian side. Theresa's Nephew and his wife joined us for 2 days as well. What a great week! But now on to the riding....

With everyone else all heading to their respective homes on Sunday it was time for Kevin, Theresa and Zin to begin their biking adventure. We headed about 30 miles south of Niagara Falls to Orchard Park to find a place to stage the car so it will be there when we complete the next days ride. We had called ahead to a hotel that was in our Adventure Cycling map for Orchard Park and the cleaning person assured us it would be just fine for us to leave our car there overnight. We arrived to discover that the manager would not allow us to park the car there. We searched around via iPhone to find a shopping mall or any other place that would be OK for overnight parking. There was one just about 2 miles away. At this point we had the car disconnected so Theresa drove that and Kevin was to follow her onto the Mall, we had walkie talkies to communicate while in route. Just as Kevin rounded a corner the RV GPS sounded an alarm that indicated trucks (our RV is classified as a Truck) are not allowed on the road to the Mall... so he quickly pulled into the nearest parking area and told Theresa to turn around and come back. Once again time to come up with Plan C... Kevin noticed a bike shop just down the road, we call them but the manager was out for lunch... HUMM lunch sounds good and wouldn't you know we were in the parking lot of an Irish Pub named 'Jack Devines' ! They had outdoor seating so we asked if it was OK to bring Zin in with us oh and by the way do you think we could park our car overnight?? It was yes to all requests from the very pleasant manager Rick. Kevin and I enjoyed the wonderful pub food rinsed down with Guinness ! We put the bikes on the RV and got what we needed out of the Jeep and were off to Lake Erie State park to spend 2 nights there. We got a bit of a preview of the bike route which looked fairly flat with wide shoulders. Theresa had made reservations online for the park a few days prior so we did not know what to expect. The Park was nice and we drove to our reserved site to discover it had a large tree at one end and was a bit more sloped than we were comfortable with so we made another loop around and asked for a different site. We were lucky there was one that suited us just a bit down from our reserved site with a great view of Lake Erie! With the RV parked and sliders out we began preparing for our first day or riding. Theresa charted the route on mapmyride here is the link:

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/106310875

Logistics took us about 4 hours today, so Theresa made a call to her niece who lives in Erie to get tips for our Tuesday destination. Her niece graciously offered to let us park the RV in their driveway for the night! It will be fun to see them as it has been 8 years since we saw her and her 5 kids!

The network using my Mifi is very iffy so I am not sure if I will be able to post much tonight or tomorrow but I will post as soon as I can. Should be fun!