After a (too) leisurely breakfast we loaded the bikes and headed up to Vorwerk Park (section point 13) to drop off a car as our end point. We figured from Waterville this was only 22.9 mi and should be infinitely doable since it was an easy mix of towpath and road work. None of us had done any practice biking to prepare so, of course, this was a DUMB idea! We should have gotten a heads-up by the surprisingly long car ride to get to our starting point in Waterville, which also made us realize just how far south in the Defiance section we had camped. We headed out on a short ride through city streets before finding the towpath at Farnsworth Park. This was the start of a beautiful 9+ mile ride along the towpath in the shade with scenic views of the Maumee River. Along the way there were many places to visit, including a Depression era-built picnic shelter at Bendview Overlook, scenic view benches, lean-to camp sites, and playground/day camp recreation areas. We crossed many residential properties along the way where owners had used their imagination to mark their own private pathways over the canal and down to the river. The best was the life-sized skeleton guard with his buddies doing the O-H-I-O wave! The towpath continued to Providence Park, which featured another low-rise dam like Independence, and ended shortly after lock 44, which was still operational because it was used as a living history exhibit that we passed by with perfect timing to see all the action! Naturally April was more interested in the mule than historical reenactments.
We began what we thought would be a brief stretch of roadwork on SR 424 (which incidentally is the road that goes past our Independence campsite), but the beating sun and high humidity, along with having already biked 10+ mi already, started taking their toll on all of us. Unfortunately, we still had a long way to the car. We welcomed a chance to be in the shade again when the BT went offroad along the river (around section point 16), but after walking our bikes along the trail for about 30 minutes, and even attempting to ride them on the trail, we decided that we the most practical way to get to our car was to dig deep and just stay on the road the rest of the way despite the sun. This was a smart move but NOT enjoyable. At one of our self-imposed rest stops we began a spirited conversation about never riding our bikes again because it was much less enjoyable than hiking, even on a good day, and April questioned why we even bothered riding on the road if we already covered these road sections of the BT in the car in all of our shuttling back-and-forth between starting/stopping points between section hikes! These valid points arose out of our complete misery at the moment, but died down when we visited an air-conditioned Mexican restaurant eating our fill of chips/salsa in Napolean. To be continued, I imagine. Despite our long and exhausting day we did manage to enjoy a campfire that night using free firewood (donation appreciated) provided by the campground.
