We both slept straight through the night last night, which was a welcome change from the night before when we froze our tooshies off. Around 8, Tammi and Pastor Rob got to the church. We were both so excited that we would be getting a nice warm breakfast! Joey pointed out something really kind of neat, and a little strange at the same time. One year ago today, the start of Day 4 of the trip, we woke up at the first church that we camped at. That morning we heard a voice saying "good morning." The pastor and his wife had come back to the church that morning to make us breakfast. That was the only time that's happened on the entire trip, until now, exactly one year later!!! We couldn't believe that, but we thought it was really neat! Breakfast was awesome- pancakes with warm mixed berry jelly, scrambled eggs with cheese, sausage, pineapple, bananas, and orange juice. Both of us had a great time talking with the Pastor and were so glad that we had a chance to meet his wife. When it was time to hit the road, we were very happy to see that the wind was in the same direction, so we would have a tailwind or a sidewind most of the day! And to top it off- the sun was shining! A couple miles down the road was the little town of Tuppers Plains. There were signs everywhere throughout the town supporting the girls basketball team that would be going to states tomorrow. So nice to see that kind of thing. We had quite a few rolling hills, but nothing like what we encountered riding through Ohio on the last trip, which I was thankful for! Eventually we were back out riding along the Ohio River. The terrain flattened out a little and we had a beautiful view again. We rode past the town of Belope and continued on straight to city of Marietta. One of the neat things about going along the Ohio river is that the towns are all so old. This one, like many of them, was founded back in the 1700s. We rode through the downtown area and saw the old courthouse building which has been used since 1797. From there, we headed towards the outskirts of town along highway 7. We stopped for a quick break at a Wendys. There, a man asked where we were traveling too and from, etc. When I mentioned Buffalo, he told me that they have family that live on Grand Island and that they still go there to visit quite often. When I mentioned San Diego, they told me that they had just moved from there to this town one week ago! Small world!! We found a McDonalds to use the wifi for a few minutes before heading off to Walmart to get a couple Voila meals and a couple chocolate bars. Since it wasn't freezing outside, we figured we would look for a place just to get out of the wind, since that was the only thing that was really making us feel cold. As we were riding along, we joked about sitting inside one of the little sheds that were on display outside of Lowes. Not too far later, we saw a church steeple and decided to head that direction. It was perfect. There was a great little porch with an overhang that was in the right place to be completely out of the wind. Since we saw a car in the driveway, we figured someone had to be around. The door was open and when we went inside, we found Pastor Steve working in his office. We asked if he minded if we ate our lunch on the porch. He said that he didn't and said that we were welcome to use the kitchen if we wanted to!! Golly, people are just so nice. We just figured it would be better to ask to use the porch since someone was there- but you have to love unexpected little treats like that! Instead of having to cook our meal on the stove, we just cooked it in the microwave. It was nice too, to enjoy the meal in the warmth and even nicer to get to do the dishes in a sink. We had a great time talking with Steve, who we found out had the last name Tebow- just like the football player (we'll probably never forget his name now!). It was a very enjoyable lunch break to say the least. I am glad that we had a chance to converse with Pastor Steve for the time that we did. It is going to be so strange when we are done with our trip because we won't have the same kind of encounters with people. I have really enjoyed meeting people as often as we do and talking to them for a while. The bikes and the trip have really served as a portal for conversation to start, and it has been like that throughout the entire trip. When we are back to being "just like everyone else," going to work and doing regular daily activities, I don't think we will find too many people that just come up and start talking to us. Touring really has been nothing but spectacular in that sense. After lunch, we headed on down the road with a terrific tail wind pushing us along. Before we realized it, we were going through the little town of Newton and then shortly after, under the bridge that went to St. Mary's, WV. Although we aren't completely positive, I am pretty sure that on our last tour we came out of the hills at St. Mary's, where we got our first views of the Ohio river. One thing we remember vividly is taking the ferry over from Sistersville, WV to OH and going to the River Restaurant right next to where the ferry drops off in OH. Both of us had very high hopes that we would make it all the way to that restaurant tonight to go out to dinner-"for old times sake." We rode and rode and kept our fingers crossed. Our hopes were high, but we still had that extra Voila meal that we got today just in case it happened to be closed for the season, we didn't make it there, or if it had closed for the night by the time we did make it there. We got into the town of New Matamoras and stopped at a gas station for a break. Joe asked one of the locals if they had been there before and if they happened to know if it would be open, or what time they usually close at. They told him that they usually close around 7- they think. I asked inside and the girls at the register said the same thing. We knew we had about 4-6 miles to go to get there, and it was already 6:30. Both of us were pretty sure that we wouldn't make it before they closed. With that being said, we decided to go out and look around town for a place to camp. We rode around and didn't find anything that looked like it would work. There was a church that looked like there were a bunch of cars at it, but upon further investigation, we found that every door in the church was locked, so we didn't know what that was about. With no luck, we decided to head out of town. I had seen earlier today on Google maps that there was a rest area not too far from the restaurant we were hoping to go to. That would be our next best bet. After we checked out the rest area, we found that it would work perfectly. The restaurant was less than a mile down the road, so we went to check if it happened to still be open. Bummed that it wasn't we headed back to the rest area. Although we had gotten there only about 10 minutes after they closed, we knew we would have never made it. We were both looking forward to that for the whole day and a bit excited to eat there again on another tour. Oh well- maybe we will just go out for breakfast in the morning instead- that way we would still get to go there! And after all, we went quite a bit further today after the great breakfast vs. how far we normally go before getting hungry after having our cereal and milk. The rest area was perfect. Bathrooms, a shelter, picnic tables, and a beautiful view of the river right there. We got our tent set up, cooked up some dinner (ate in the tent in hopes to stay a little warmer), washed our dishes as quickly as we could and then bunkered down in our sleeping bags for the night. Today was yet another great day. It is still so weird to think about how things are going to be when we get back. We won't have too much excitement in our day to day activities, I hope that we don't get bored with that after all the days of adventure we've had. It will take some readjusting that's for sure. We made it farther than we thought we would miles wise, but ended in the place that we had hoped to anyways- Fly, OH. Our miles totaled 70.96 today.
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