Rock ‘n Rollin’ to Cleveland

Ahhhh what a refreshing day of riding. We only had a single day on the bike from Detroit to Cleveland. Looking at our schedule from the beginning of our summer when we were doing 6-,7-, and 8-day rides, we were anxiously waiting for the 1-day rides separating us from Major League ball parks. Detroit to Cleveland was going to be one of those rides.

Riding through the city of Detroit wasn’t necessarily the safest of options for us. The roads aren’t of the best quality and bike lanes do not dominate throughout their city infrastructure. We started our ride that morning just outside of the center of the city in SOUTH DETROIT. Kidding, there is no south Detroit. South Detroit is Canada. Thanks for nothing Journey. People actually BELIEVED you.

On one of the best weather days we’d ever had, we were happy and smiley about our ride of the day.

75 degrees with a slight breeze and sunshine. Bliss. We knew we’d have great back roads and a couple of trails as we road all the way into Cleveland. Right out of Gibraltar, MI there is a bike trail that follows alongside the road for a few miles. When that ends, it didn’t end the fun. Fort St and Dixie Highway were great roads with very little traffic and pretty views.

Finishing up our time in Michigan and passing into the state of Ohio, our 24th state by bicycle, our ride slowed a bit.

As does with every big city as we maneuver the city streets, Toledo was no different. Well, except that they are the Rockets apparently. No other city is that.

But there were a couple of nice bike paths that meandered through the city’s park system and help speed up our ride as we made our way from one end to the other.

From the beginning, we had made bicycle route maps for every single ride of the trip. We usually tried to join up with these as we planned out our route of the day, but due to different circumstances on every ride, we usually altered our original planned route. We hadn’t followed the route “to the T” very often before the All-Star Break, but now that we were in the second half of our trip and there were tons of Rails to Trails, bike paths and shorter rides, we were going to follow our original route a lot more closely.

Riding out of Toledo, our bike route led our ride to the North Coast Inland Trail.

Our halfway meeting point of the day was going to be at Freemont, OH and the North Coast Inland Trail was a straight shot all the way into Freemont. A well-covered and well-maintained path for the rest of the ride into Freemont was a big win! The trail was busy as well. We really like seeing other people on our rides. It’s good to know we aren’t the only ones out there and we love seeing Americans take advantage of their country’s great bike paths.

The ride into Cleveland from Freemont was the straightest shot we could have taken. Via Country Road 10 we rode until it ran into the lakefront road along Lake Erie. Anytime we can take a lakefront road, well we’re going to do it, cause it’s pleasant. Riding with a water view rocks. And in this case, we have rocks.

Riding through the suburbs into Cleveland was actually pretty free and easy as well. There was traffic, of course, but the traffic was courteous and the shoulders were large enough. The whole ride was without incident, smooth and fast. We suggest you try it Michiganders and Clevelanders. Detroit to Cleveland is A-OK!

Next up we were going to ride to Progressive Field the following day to throw out the first pitch, visit the Rock Hall of Fame and have a sandwich at The Melt.