Most likely we'll stop and ask locals the best route to get from one town to the next, and we'll generally pick a goal stopping point for each night, but we'll really have no idea how busy or how hilly each road is until we're on it. For the most part locals are friendly, but they no nothing about bicycling. If you ask if a road is hilly, they will usually say not too bad and then you'll find yourself climbing a mountain for 3 miles. Also, they have no concept of distances. They usually estimate things to be much much closer than they really are, like "yeah, there's a campground 5 miles down the road," and an hour and a half later you finally find it.

So, leaving the TransAmerica Trail behind us, Alex and I began a new chapter in our adventure. We started following our AAA maps to navigate us towards Connecticut. For our first day, we did surprisingly well in picking good roads. The traffic was minimal, the pavement was new, and the scenery was gorgeous. We also succeeded in picking a route that wasn't horribly hilly, so by the end of the day, we were feeling pretty good about our navigation.

Late in the afternoon, we decided that we would try and shoot for the town of Mt. Sterling to spend the night. We made the decision just outside of Judy, which is about 3 miles north of Mt. Sterling. When we got into Judy, we stopped briefly at the gas station in the middle of town, which also happened to be the towns only intersection. Upon starting up again, Alex asked which way do we go. Since I had just looked at the map a couple of miles back, I told him to keep going straight and follow the road right into town.