FRIDAY - "The Bridges of Frederick County"
Friday's ride was a bit over sixty miles. There were a couple of steep climbs, but these were relatively short for the area. Total climbing was about 4500 feet.
I brought two different bikes to this ride. My '93 steel Basso Gap is what I rode on Friday and Sunday.
There were plenty of vistas of long roads between farm fields...
...and scenic rural towns.
There were water stops, and rest stops with refreshments. Always a welcome sight!
Fredrick County boasts six covered bridges, three of them are public. Today's ride took us through all three of them!
There was a handy rest stop within picture taking distance of this one.
Riders never seem to mind getting in eachother's pictures.
This interesting stretch of road is on the way back to Mt. St. Mary's. It looks fairly flat, even downhill. When you're on it, you discover that it's a significantly uphill grade. I've seen this kind of illusion before on mountain roads, but I haven't heard a name for it. Some riders did a bit of walking here.
I used my Garmin Etrex Legend GPS and DeLorme Topo USA software to do a route profile for each day. Referring to this profile, the covered bridges were in the "valleys" that occurred later in the ride.
