Day 16 – New London to Clinton, miles 490 – 510

Today we woke up in the beautiful backyard of our friend Justin. Our trip from New London, a short 30 miles to Clinton, was a nice respite from the hot sunny day. We had a yummy breakfast of yogurt, granola, blueberry coffee cake, fruit and smoothies. We packed away our gear, got a photo, and were on the road by 8 am in hopes of beating the midday heat.

We were lucky enough to recruit Justin in joining us for the first 15 miles from his house. He guided us to a nearby waterfront park and garden (Harkness Memorial State Park). We continued along fairly flat roads and over bridges. We parted ways with Justin in Niantic.

As we were saying our thanks and farewells a cyclist rode up to us. We remembered his pink taped handlebars and mint green bike passing us earlier, but later as we were stopped, he found us and wanted to know more about our tour.

Today’s route took us through very beautiful Connecticut backroads with ample tree cover and very manageable hills. Sarah queued the perfect playlist of Billy Joel, Carole King and Van Morrison.

We rode over another bike friendly bridge landing us in Old Saybrook. We stopped in at a family friend of the Staiger’s. We sat on Mary’s porch overlooking a picture-perfect marsh and enjoyed gluten free Tate’s cookies with ice cold water — a perfect pit stop before our last 8 miles.

Leaving Mary’s, and heading to our friend Megan’s, we took the Post Road where without much sun-cover I was incredibly grateful to Katie & Anne for picking me up my coveted sunshirt ❤️

Now that I mention sun protection, we stopped in at a pharmacy where I acquired another bottle of SPF 70 before we made our merry way to Shanks for lunch. Through the generosity of my amazing and wonderful grandparents we fueled up with fish & chips, nachos, and tacos. We even got our ice cream fix, but it melted (aka disappeared) before I could get a picture.

After a long, leisurely lunch on the water, we tackled the last flat three miles to Megan. We arrived a Megan’s beautiful beach house, quickly detonated our tents in the backyard and made our way to the beach.

Lucky for me she had a shady tent set up with another great playlist filling the hot summer air. We met her grandma, cousin and neighbors. And quickly jumped into the water. We lounged on the beach for several hours and caught up with our greatly missed classmate.

After enjoying charcuterie, we ventured back to her house to shower and eat dinner. Megan and her grandmother prepared a delicious Italian meal of chicken cutlet, spaghetti & salad. Another perfect meal!!

Today has been another incredible day behind the bike (I would say on the road, but these last two days of <30 miles feels more like a beach trip than a bike trip). I am truly loving every minute of this once in a lifetime trip and am so proud of my ladies for all the work we put into planning, fundraising & actually biking! Without my team I’d probably be still sitting by the cemetery off Route 3 (only a 10 minute ride to “Next to Nowehere” ice cream) extremely deflated, sunburnt, and hangry.

A full heart despite the heat,

Kelly