We busted our ass to get to Centerburg, the midpoint of the OTET. Before taking this picture, I laid in the grass for ten minutes and moaned in agony.
Sadly, Pizzaburg (pictured in the background) was closed for two more hours, so we went up into town to the appropriately named InTown Restaurant. It was okay, service was good and food was average. They filled our bottles, though.
It started to pour while we were cashing out.
I covered my Brooks and we tried to press on for a bit in our rain gear (what little we had brought, anyway). There is a pavilion at the Centerburg Church Of God that has water stocked for hot sunny days, which we weren't experiencing, but we decided to stop and see if we could wait out the rain and I decided to scope out the fridge. Nice little setup and recommend stopping if you're in need of a refill...
As you can tell, the radar looked bad, so we decided to ride the remaining 15 miles in a hard rain into Mt. Vernon. It was SO MUCH FUN, seriously, I love rain riding! We had to skip Ariel Foundation Park due to the rain, and went straight to our hotel - the Mt. Vernon Grand. HIGHLY recommended! Very hospitable to cyclists and just a posh little setup, owned by the Nazarene university in town I guess...
From Mt. Vernon, we pushed off onto the Kokosing Gap Trail which was, as advertised, BEAUTIFUL. Here are a couple of pictures from where the trail starts in Mt. Vernon.
