Country to city: Part 1

After a breakfast of waffles with fruit, we make for an early start. Like our first day, we have over 50 miles to bike and we will pass through Columbus, a major city interlaced with busy highways and interstates. 

Leaving South Charleston, we pass the local grain co-op with its series of tall, silver cylindrical storage tanks. The single-line railroad splits into three additional sidings to accommodate the extra trains that will likely be needed during its busy season. Corn is growing everywhere, even on the tracks (though an opportunistic seeding) that are adjacent to our path. 

As we pass this facility, we detect the distinctive smell of either of pesticide or herbicide or perhaps both. Next to the silos is a huge storage tank with a stated capacity of 1,080,051 gallons. We don’t think it is corn syrup. It is surrounded by portable plastic tanks that can be placed on the back of a pickup truck, trailers that can be towed and large, three-wheeled tractors with spray arms that must extend at least 20 feet in each direction. It is our first exposure to the unsettling requirements of agri-business. We move on.

A box turtle suns itself near a rail on the tracks, rabbits sit poised at the edge of the trail and groundhogs scurry about. A lone turkey vulture flies overhead before perching itself on a tree next to the field. 

The train tracks to our right must have been recently sprayed with a herbicide as anything 6 feet on either side is dead or dying. Fortunately the spraying was selective, allowing the needed weeds on the sides of the trail to continue feeding the birds, bees and butterflies. 

Like the paths behind us, this one is in excellent condition and we peddle effortlessly to the north. We pass in and out of tunnels of trees giving us welcome shots of coolness contrasted to the increasing heat of the trail in the full sun.

To our left are old telephone poles as well as a fair number of unused glass insulators in a variety of colors. Typically these poles are left only with their horizontal cross arms and vertical spindle-like insulation holders intact. They remind me of bygone days when telegraphs were the only way to communicate between cities and railroads were a main mode of faster transport.

The weeds have changed a bit on this section of the trail with ragweed, wild geraniums, sweet pea, thistles and raspberries added to the mix. The raspberries are just beginning to deliver harvestable berries. Small developments of bluebird houses built by local volunteers start to appear alongside the trial.

Ten miles out from our start, we take a break at a bicycle rest stop in the town of London. It is top rate with camping grounds, toilets, bicycle repair rack and tools, water and picnic tables with shelter. It also has an obelisk  for another bicyclist who died, Billy Young. We passed a less formal marker for him a few miles back. 

The trial ends as we bike through the streets of London. Like many towns we have passed through, there is an abandoned railroad station and storage grain silos nearby. Old telephone wires sit on insulators high above the station at the depot. The town is quiet with little traffic and we feel safe passing through it but happy to find the beginning of the next trail, Roberts Pass.