23.6 mi / 11.0 mph / 638 ft. climbing
Home: Rocky Neck State Park

Today was relatively short, simply because that’s the spacing between state parks here on the Connecticut coast. Well, actually I had been debating some alternative routings that would move us east faster, but then I remembered, why? We’re not yet needing to flee south from cold weather (we’ll see if that attitude bites us in the ass later!), and easing back into riding after 18 days off is exactly what we should be doing anyway.

We were up at the comfortable 7:30am we’d gotten accustomed to, and riding before 10am. It was 67F when we woke up; the beauty of the moderating September ocean is that it’s comfortable all day when riding, and still comfortable in the morning!

At Old Saybrook we had to navigate a bunch of twists and turns to get us to  a sidewalk stuck to the opposite side of I-95, in order to cross a big bridge over the Connecticut River. Just before we began the climb Rett spied a picnic table behind an American Legion Hall, so we stopped for lunch.

High winds from the stalled off-shore low-pressure system over the next few days made me wonder about the ferries. So I checked while eating, and, shit, the ferry we were planning to take to Martha’s Vineyard tomorrow is cancelled, and won’t run again until 7 days from now! We can’t wait that long because other ferries we need to take will be done for the season before we get to them. My thought is that we can just reverse the loop to Cape Cod we’d planned, but I don’t mention anything to Rett because there’s no point in getting her stressed out in the middle of the day when we can’t do anything.

We haven’t seen any mosquitoes to infect us with Eastern Equine Encephalitis, but as we passed through the town of Old Lyme, I realized that this is where Lyme Disease was named! We’re in a hotbed of insect-borne diseases here! (but no, we haven’t seen any ticks either.)

We were in camp before 2pm, which gave plenty of time to figure out a new plan. My idea to reverse things meant riding across Rhode Island and Massachusetts to Plymouth, taking a ferry to the tip of Cape Cod, then riding clockwise down the peninsula and ferrying to Martha’s Vineyard last. But crap, that won’t work either, because the Plymouth-Provincetown ferry is also cancelled for the next four days due to the same high seas.

Oh well, with no ferries running, riding east is the only thing to do anyway. We might need to just skip Cape Cod. Luckily, for once in our lives, we had nothing booked (at tonight’s campground they don’t even allow bookings now that it’s the off-season!), so we’re actually able to exercise the flexibility we always imagined we would have more of.

The campground was nicely tree-covered (and wind-protected!), but was rather open between campsites.  However, since we literally had half the loop to ourselves, and could barely see any other campers, the openness gave it a really cool atmosphere. We had a great chat with David and Heather, sometime-bike-tourers who have been “living” here for seven weeks. They confirmed what we’d assumed, that the place is amazing now in its emptiness vs. the overflowing-bathroom madhouse that it was just a few weeks ago.