Marietta, Pennsylvania to French Creek State Park -- 56 miles

We woke at 6:30 am, and began biking at 7:30 am. We started the day riding in commuter traffic but it thinned out soon enough. We rode past the beautiful farms of Lancaster County - the hills were much more gentle today than they were yesterday. Lenny took a lot of pictures of the scenery. We stopped to look at headstones from the 1700's and 1800's at a small family cemetery - the Brubachers. The headstones were all written in German.

We stopped at the chiropractic office of Mary Jane Horton in Manheim - we were pleasantly surprised to find that she was a Sherman College graduate, and had read about our trip in "Straight from Sherman"! Lenny chatted with an Amish woman named Foly Eberle in the town of Stevens, and told her about our trip. She said she has seen lots of bikers go by and wondered where they came from and where they were headed. She said the furthest she has traveled from home was about 100 miles to visit a pen pal in Maryland. She said people who travel have a special talent; Lenny said we all have our gifts, and she agreed. 

We stopped in Bowmansville to have lunch at a pub/restaurant - the first place on our trip that has charged for each refill of iced tea. We spent $5.00 on tea! We thought about riding to Phoenixville (65 miles), but didn't want to get caught in the evening rush hour traffic, so we decided to camp at French Creek State Park instead. We bought fruit at a roadside stand, and wanted to talk with the woman for a few minutes, but we heard heavy thunder nearby and had to hurry to get to the park. The rain started to downpour just as we pulled into a covered area by the park office. 

We noticed that they also had cabins, so Lenny went to ask about availability. He put on his raincoat and walked around to the offices. There was a woman behind the counter who Lenny spoke to. She said, "You want to roll in at this late hour and get yourself a cabin? This isn't a motel, you know!" Lenny was amazed at the nasty and sarcastic tone coming from this public servant! She said wait a minute and got a ranger who was so agitated, presumably by Lenny's presence, that his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets. He said in a tone that matched his face that they were closing up and we would have to go to the camping area to find out about a cabin - another mile through the park. 

Lenny got on his bike and rode up there, through the rain and over one of the steeper hills of the entire trip. Lorraine followed when it stopped raining, about 10 minutes later. When Lenny arrived at the checkpoint-type building, there was no one there. A woman walked up to him with a cordless phone and said, "That would be me you're looking for." Lenny asked her about cabins while she was on a personal call. She informed him that they had plenty of availability, but there was a two-day minimum. Lenny said that the ranger who sent him out into the rain never mentioned a two-day minimum. She proceeded to ask him who he spoke to and called another ranger over to her building to speak to him about the situation. The ranger didn't add anything, he just repeated that there was a two-day minimum. Then she cut in and said, "You don't want to camp?" Lenny said no, and thought, "Would you want to set up camp in the pouring rain?" but decided to hold his tongue. 

When Lorraine arrived, this woman was telling Lenny that she couldn't do 1-night without her manager's authorization, the manager wasn't available until 8 am tomorrow, and she would not bend the rules and risk getting herself in trouble over this. Ironically, the worst service we received on the entire trip was in our home state of Pennsylvania. The workers at this park were the most snotty, unhelpful, and hostile people we encountered on the entire trip. We ended up camping, and got our tent set up just before it started raining again. It poured for the rest of the evening. We snacked on fruit, Fritos, and cookies in our tent.