We stayed at a Candlewood Suites that had a laundry room and a full sized refrigerator in the room so it was perfect for getting all of our food bought and packed for Briggs.
We left early Thursday morning to be in line at 9AM for the 3PM campsite opening. Sounds crazy but we were definately not alone
People were pulling out the beers and the coolers, settling in to just hang until they opened the gates at 3. We had a 15 mile route that I’d pulled from ridewithgps and after a bit of debate decided to take off and give it a go. The weather was due to turn nasty in the afternoon and although it wasn’t terribly hot, the humidity was pretty high. Tom pulled the bikes off the car and we headed out. Pennsylvania has hills and some of them are nasty! Pennsylvania also doesn’t seem to have a lot of cyclists or much regard for sharing the road. We didn’t see anyone else on a bike and there were plenty of cars and trucks that didn’t see any need to move over when they passed. On the plus side, there’s some really nice scenery to look at when you’re slogging up those hills (I was slogging, Tom was doing just fine) and the road along the river was really pretty and quiet.
When we arrived back the general sentiment from the Briggs crew and campers seemed to be that we were in fact crazy; apparently cycling is just not a thing around there or at least not with this crowd! Felt good at that point to just sit and wait for the gates to open at 3. The weather held and we were soon set up
They had a campers only band that night doing an Allman Brother’s tribute. We were both happy to hit the air mattresses early!