Day 6: Easton, Pa to Pottstown, Pa 72 miles, 3650 feet of elevation

[Okay, I got tonight's destination town wrong.  Lancaster is tomorrow night.  My apologies.]

Today was mostly ridden through this landscape.  Up and down hills.  Corn and other crops all around.

Today was another ride through the rolling hills of Pennsylvania.  After a brief return to New Jersey this morning to ride along the Delaware, we veered southwest to ride though farm country the rest of the day.

And sunflowers!  We passed lots of fields of these tall beauties.

Hills.  Lots of hills.  If you don't like riding up hills, such as Bridgeton Hill Road, a 1-mile, 15% grade climb known locally as "The Wall," my advice is to avoid the following:  any street with "hill" in it's name; any roads with "high," "highland," "mount," or "mountain" in their titles; any upcoming town with "Mt." in it's name.  Especially true throughout the Northeast, you're bound to find yourself shifting into much lower gears and cursing yourself for having taken that road.

The Morris Run Bridge has seen better days.  For whatever reason, this small bridge isn't going to undergo any rehabilitation any time soon.  Cars have to find a detour.  Cyclists can just walk their bikes across.

In other cases, we did have to find alternate routes around major construction.  This Perkiomen Trail, a hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding trail, suited our needs.  A bit of a rough ride, but a nice, shaded ride along Perkiomen Creek.

Detours.  We get them from time to time, but the summer months seem especially prone to highway and road repairs and repavings.  We rode through one road under repair and had to spent time during the SAG stops to get all the tar off our tires.  Two local bridges were closed, one permanently, the other under reconstruction.  The first was a simple walk around.  The second resulted in us taking a hiking/horse riding path to circumnavigate the repaired bridge.  It wasn't all bad.  As a result of that second detour, we wound up stopping at a local bike shop that offered free coffee and doughnuts to riders.  A nice afternoon pick-me-up!

They were so pretty, I thought I'd include a second shot of them.

I keep mentioning all the steep hill climbs.  Over dinner tonight, some of the ride leaders were talking about all of the climbs they've taken out of the East Coast ride since it's inception in 2006.  Apparently, this ride was originally designed by one of the most avid hill-climbing ride leaders for the owner of America By Bicycle and his son.  The father sent his wife and daughters down to Florida for the summer while he and his son planned a bike tour from New Hampshire to Florida to meet up with the family.  The ride leader carefully mapped out the route but included some of his most favorite challenging hill and mountain climbs.  The rest of humanity doesn't quite feel the same degree of affinity with climbing as that guy so, year after year, the recent and current ride leaders have been excising some of the most difficult climbs along the way.  What we have now, still considered the toughest of all the ABB rides, is the "watered-down" version of that original tour.  After six days of some severe climbing, I can only imagine what that original route must have been to ride.

Tomorrow, we hit Amish country as we ride into Lancaster.