June 7th - Wednesday.
67 kilometers
After a night in the Passo Oscuro campground/RV park we were up bright and early not really interested in lingering. We had both fallen asleep pretty early (again) and it was only today I realized that it could be jet lag that's causing us to feel so wiped out in addition to the day of biking (Umm,duh). Tonight we vowed to stay up later and not do the two and a half hour nap at 1730 before we officially went to bed. So far so good it's 2100 as I am typing this journal entry.
Today we were hooking up with a route we had read about in Lonely Planet and felt a little more relaxed knowing that someone else had already mapped out the directions for us. While we've always been able to find our destination these past couple days (thanks to Jon) I'll be the first to admit it's been, at times, very frustrating, tiring and just plain old not fun when we got lost. There is a cathedral outside of Rome that we have seen three sides of while getting lost. All we had to do was follow the directions in the book. Sounds easy enough, right? Remember that you're dealing with No-Sense-of-Direction-Sherry here who, despite knowing that she is navigationally challenged, has an opinion about everything. Jon emphatically agrees with my self-description.
They're doing a lot of repaving of the roads in the Rome area which we really appreciated as we pedalled along SS1 toward Civitavecchia. We saw many cyclists who appeared to be in training for a race (perhpas The Tour). It was a good road to do it on - not too many hills - just enough to keep you changing gears on a regular basis. We had been pretty spoiled the first few days of cycling with the occasional gentley rolling hill but mostly flat road. Today was a little more work but not too bad. Unfortunately, we were tired and had talked about spending a couple nights in the same campground - if we liked it - to catch up on laundry, writing, planning, etc. The day went on and the campground we planned to stay at in Santa Marinella was passed somewhere between one end of town to the other. I was really disappointed because I was looking forward to just chilling. My grumpiness turned into Jon's grumpiness because who else is there to be grumpy with other than the one you're traveling with?! In turn, I got snapped at for not buying chocolate gelato, but rather mocha - a sure sign that we needed a break. You know if you're quibling over gelato flavors something was up. Once we fount a campsite, we talked about what we wanted and what were our ideas, hopes, plans for how this trip will unfold. I told Jon that my daily concern was knowing that I had a place to stay at night, not getting to a campsite wiped out from a day of riding which meant days where we would bike less or not at all in order to recooperate. We both agreed that we felt really good about what we've seen as far as the country side and scenery - that there is no way that we could have seen even half of what we've seen so far if we had backpacked, or rented a car. We felt good knowing this. Riding along the Mediterranean Sea has been amazing and we've really enjoyed it. On the way into town a Volkswagon camper van was passing us going in the opposite direction. It caught my eye because it was so big compared to the ultra compact cars preferred by the italiens. When the driver saw Jon and I he stuck his arm out the window and gave us the thumbs up sign!
Once in town we were planning to pedal through to a campground a little farther north when we saw a sign for a campground in the city. This we hadn't read anywhere so we went left as the sign (seemed) to indicate and got lost trying to find this nonexistant campground but found a quaint but bustling port town instead. A cruise ship had recently pulled in and was docked nearby. There was a great variety of accents that could be heard. We found an internet café and Jon sent an email letting our families know we were ok. The people watching was great. I stood outside with our bikes and was trying to dig out a banana from Jon's bag while making sure neither bik fell over - we don't have kickstands. Sure enough first Jon's starts to go and then mine. Luckily, there were some service men nearby who I could hear talking about the bikes that helped pick them up and the banana I dropped. That was a little embarassing but I was really glad they were there to help me. I also wish I had a kickstand.
Continued on 6/8
Once Jon finished with his email we had to wait half an hour for the information kiosk to open so we went and got our gelato's. It was worth the wait. We were able to get more detailed maps of the area and real directions to an actual campground.
So it was back on the bikes. About ten kilometers out of town we saw the sign for the campground. We turned off the main road and pedalled down a newly paved, beautiful road with very little taffic. It was lined with trees and native plants - it was just very peaceful after leaving the industrialized portion of the city during rush hour. The sign said go left at 1500 meters. At the intersection there was a hard left and a soft left with no sign in sight giving us a clue to which road we should take. A fifty fifty chance at picking the right road - well, guess which one we chose! We chose the wrong one. And it was a long road BUT at the end was a small group of homes edging the coastling of the Mediterranean Sea. You could catch a glimpse of the water which was an amazing shade of blue between the homes. The neightborhood dog was lying in the middle of the street cooling himself in the shade. As we passed the dog he couldn't be bothered with more of an acknowledgement than lazily following us with his eyes. We also passed a couple in a very passionate kiss. "That's A'more!"
Once we backtracked to the two left turn intersection there was a clearly marked sign completely out of view from the direction we originally came from. Sadly, if we had just looked over our shoulder as we took the wrong left turn I think we could have seen it but then we would have seen that hidden cluster of homes on the water.
The campsite, our best deal yet at 10,60 total for the two of us plus 2euros for our showers - an excellent deal. We were pretty excited about that. This means that there was no free hot showers, no market, no restaurant, and no night club. That was ok with us. We layed out our tent, ground cloth and fly to dry completely before setting up the tent. It was pretty quite there. It wasn't anything special. The good news is that we are planning to sleep in tomorrow.
