Valley Forge and Sue's old stomping grounds

Thursday, May 25. French Creek State Park to Conshohocken, PA. With the idea of heading to Norristown, PA, just 30 miles away or so, we slept in a bit in our secluded campsite this morning. It felt a little lazy, but it also felt good to relax. We had a site at French Creek State Park, and might have been the only people in the loop (I certainly didn't see anyone else until morning). As anticipated, we had a good, long downhill stretch to rejoin the route, almost 2 and a half miles worth. That was nice. Of course, we are still in Pennsylvania, so there was plenty of climbing still to come. As we approached a turn on the route that would have led us onto miles of back roads (and no services), we opted to stay on a more direct route (which we would later rejoin anyway); and it's a good thing we did, because otherwise we would have missed the ice cream shop. It was a perfect place to stop, at just about 18 miles. The day was warm and we needed a cool treat; and although water ice (pronounced "wooder ice", we were later informed by an ad on a passing bus) was on the menu, we chose the familiar ice cream so we could get our dairy for the day. Yeah, dairy. You'd be surprised how easy it is to have NO dairy servings during a typical day on this trip. We have to make sure we get our minimum RDA, ya know. We reached Valley Forge around 1 and met George and Joan, cyclists who had just ridden on the path we were about to take, and who were getting ready to head back. They gave us some information about Norristown (basicallly, not to expect much), and about Conshohocken (where they thought we should go since the library was easy to find). Even though I knew Conshohocken was more towards Philadelphia than I thought we were going to go, when we got to Norristown it seemed like the right thing to do. Joan is a teacher who is out sick today, although she looks like she's pretty well beaten whatever bug was affecting her this morning (ah, the wonders of cycling). George is a representative for Etxe Ondo, and they were both sporting EO jerseys (very nifty, too). Joan had told us that the path we were about to take was flat, but we perhaps misunderstood that she was talking about the trail on the other side of the river. The trail from Valley Forge was still somewhat rolling, with not a few challenging uphills (made more challenging by the expectation of flat terrain); then, we crossed the river - how to describe this? - on a boardwalk on the side of a bridge, maybe 3 feet wide. We were both struck with the same thought, that scene from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" with the rickety suspension bridge. For a good while afterwards, I had the Indiana Jones theme song in my head. The path along the Schuylkill River (that's pronounced SKOOL-kil) was smooth and flat and fast. We were overtaken at one point by another cyclist who was interested in our trailers, and we chatted briefly before she had to race off ahead to catch up with her riding partner. We never even got her name. By the way, Sandy, you'll be happy to know that the tire you helped us get at Green Mountain Cycles is working out very well. Nancy is very happy with the smooth way it rides. Thanks so much, again, for your help; we might still be there if not for you. The small shop that George and Joan said we would find in Conshohocken was indeed easy to find, and so was the library. An older couple at the shop didn't really believe us when we told them we had ridden there from Atlanta, and asked several times before they would believe it. The weather seemed to be threatening rain, for the first time in many days, so we looked for a nearby hotel, and found one in Plymouth Meeting, less than two miles away. After two mountaintop campgrounds in the last two days, Nancy promised I would get a hotel and pizza tonight; true to her word, here we are at a Hampton Inn and we walked over to Franzone's for some good Philly pizza. Over dinner, we decided to go into Philadelphia tomorrow, and perhaps to visit Sue Pezely's brother Joe and his wife Patty, or Sue's parents, who live nearby. We will see what develops over the next day; in the meantime, we're staying here an extra night so we can do the Philadelphia thing tomorrow without the trailers. We'll just leave them in the room for the day and take our bikes in to town. Will we be able to hook up with Sue's parents or with Joe and Patty? We'll see tomorrow!