And another trip for this week, out to the Kuhns.(need to update these directions after the trip. This one is more of an experiment, trying to stay off of Allegheny River Blvd, Freeport Road and 28 at rush hour)
Estimated distance: 15 miles.
Start at St. Mary's Cemetary at the entrance on the right.
Stay to the left, all the way to the bottom, and turn right on Butler St.
After 1.5 miles, turn left onto route 8 / Fleming Bridge.
Directly after crossing the river, turn right on Main Street.
Turn left on N Canal Street which merges into Kittanning Pike.
When it ends (2 miles), turn right onto Dorseyville Road.
After 4 miles, turn right onto Indianola Road.
After 2 miles, turn left onto the Yellow Belt,
and an immediate right onto McClellan Road.
McClellan will turn shortly left at a T,
and after a mile then turn right onto Cove Run Road
Take that for a half mile, and then turn left onto Rich Hill Road
Another half mile, turn right on Lefever Hill Road (too many roads with "Hill" in the name)
Turn left onto Little Deer Creek Road.
Posted by
Jon Daley on
August 24, 2006, 3:17 pm
| Read 3101 times
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The total trip was 18 miles.
Bikes aren't allowed in the cemetary, so I went down Penn to Mathilda and around the circle to Negley, and then down past the zoo, the way we usually drive. I wasn't entirely sure where the Fleming Bridge was, since I was now coming from the other direction, but I vaguely remembered that it was 62nd street or so, and that turned out to be close enough.
The bridge was good to ride across, and Etna or wherever it is was alright as well, although a fair amount of traffic, but it was all slow, so I could easily keep up with it.
Kittanning Pike had a pretty large hill, and I am out of shape, so that made the rest of the trip much harder than it should have been. I also didn't have anywhere near enough water, but I stopped at the top of Kittanning Pike where a Chinese lady was mowing her lawn, and when I asked for water, she yelled for her son to help me, and say "blah blah chinese... 'spring' blah blah", so that sounded good - I guess he put the good stuff in my water bottle. It was very cold.
I stopped again at a small house at the intersection of Cove Run Road, and the man was also quite friendly, though distracted by the fire alarm coming over his scanner - I am not sure if he was a volunteer fireman, or just interested.
McClellan was a small dirt road without any traffic, which was nice, although the road had those washboard ripples in it from the rain in some places, making it tough to go very fast.
The hills at the end weren't that bad, Lefever Hill might be a good size hill, but I was going down, so it was fine - the car in front of me wanted to go really slow, which was kind of annoying, but there wasn't room to get around.
I was pretty beat by the time I got to the Kuhns, but after lots of water and a nice cold shower it was better.
My backpack was drenched pretty much all the way through, so I had to do a load of laundry to have clothes to wear - the baskets I used to have on my bike are nice for that reason - not restricting the airflow like a backpack does.
The next day I decided that if I biked all the way home, I might not be able to bike all the way to Moon, so I asked the Kuhns to drive me home, and then I had a nice bike ride to Moon.