21 August - Heidelberg Camp Rest Day

Slept nicely in the tent overnight because the temperature was perfect around 60 degrees. I felt like sleeping in and I had to make myself get up at 7:00am. Free coffee and a light breakfast consisting of cold cuts, breads, jellies, yogurt and hard boiled eggs. The hard boiled eggs were multicolored like Easter eggs and apparently they come from the local store that way.

We spent the day at camp just resting, walking around town, and walking to restaurants to eat. On Sunday nearly everything is closed, so it’s very quiet around town. We’re told they do not work on Sunday, even at the workshop at home. No noise and no loud tools. They take breaks seriously and I think that’s great. One of the camp cats came around to meet me for a moment. I also did some route planning for the next day.

In the afternoon I was able to work on my bike and rectify the steering issue I was having. It only required re-torquing of the upper triple nut. I took it for a test ride and it seems the noise has gone away. It was a pretty easy fix, so I’m happy.

We took the light rail train into downtown Heidelberg in the evening to eat. We walked the main pedestrian street down to the castle at the end of town. We did a little window shopping and got a bite to eat. I had German dumplings with grilled onions and a great salad.

22 Aug - Wildberg Germany

We rode from Heidelberg to Wildberg via backroads. We didn’t leave camp until around 12 because we lingered all morning, I worked on my front wheel, and Mark wanted to load the GPS on his Garmin, which took a few minutes to figure out. The day was hot and we only did 100 miles. Many of the roads were great, sweeping country roads. We found a campground at the end of the day, like an little privately owned KOA. It’s in a wooded area and there are lots of campers and families. They gave us a secluded spot near the creek. They do have shower facilities so that’s nice. Little did we realize that the campground is in between the highway and the train track. Hopefully the noise dies down later. It’s getting better as the evening goes on. I can hear fish jumping in the creek and the crickets chirping. It’s quite nice.

23 Aug - Inzlingen Germany

We rode from Wildberg to Inzlingen Germany near the Swiss border. For the first time Mark and Renee were waiting on me to leave, and we did leave around 9:30am which is pretty good. The first half of the day was a slow start because we were on back roads.

We stopped in the town of Walfach which was very nice with a medieval feel to it with cobblestone streets, a gate wall, and festive flags overhead. We stopped for lunch at a nice restaurant where I got a delicious pizza with artichoke, red pepper, mushrooms, curry, and cheese. It was an interesting combo.

I’m learning that my Osmand GPS app sometimes picks very small or inaccessible roads. This resulted in a couple dead end turn-arounds. I will follow Google Maps’ recommendation in the future because it’s more accurate and we need to improve our daily average mileage. In the afternoon we made better time on B-roads and arrived at a nice hotel in Inzlingen which is at the far southwest corner of Germany. Tomorrow we will enter France.