Biking the Rhine to the sea: No room at the Inn

Today's route ended in Schoonhoven. When I tried to find a place there through my regular apps, there was nothing available in town. I did find one place, serveral miles out of town. That actually turned out to be a good thing!

I got a little travel trailer (they call them caravans here) in the backyard of some very nice folks.

Compact, comfortable, and nice and private.

I spent a good bit of time making my reservations for everything up to my flight home on July 1.

With just one problem. My train from Rotterdam stops in Brussels and I change to a different carrier. The ticket from Rotterdam to Brussels is a mobile ticket so I just have to display it on the phone. The Brussels to Paris ticket says "print at home." Swell. That's 5,000 miles away. That won't work. Luckily, Ernest, the host here, worked with me to get it printed on his printer. He's not real techy so he ended up getting his son in law to help. They gave me 2 copies so I could have a backup. I like the way they think!

Tomorrow will be a short day, only 32 kilometers followed by another 32k day to get to the North Sea; the end of the Rhine's journey.

I'm pretty excited about getting there!

So here's what I saw on my way here that said to me "take a picture."

Leaving Wijk bij Duurstede. I had a Dutch fellow pronounce it for me and I still can't say it.

You really know you're leaving town when you see a sign like this. A shame too. It is one of my favorite places that I've visited.

Back on the dikes, again and waiting for the wind to hit me. Later, I took a video of the wind blowing the tall grass around at the bottom of the dike. You can't take a picture of the wind, but you can always take a picture of what the wind is doing, and it was blowing hard.

For some reason, KFC and McDonald's signs seem to always be together.

When I first saw this, I thought it was a bunch of solar panels, but instead it's just coverings for a vineyard or orchard. Gotta keep the birds out if you want to protect your produce.

A lock in action. Specs have to be just exactly right for these boats to fit into there.

An old lock in a small village. No ocean going ships are gonna pass through this one.

Holland is full of canals.This is a cute little bridge going over an old canal.

I just liked the looks of this house with the thatched roof.

I don't know what kind of sheep these are, but I have never seen any sheep that had spots. Perhaps they were cross bred with dalmatians?

In New Zealand we saw mailboxes made out of almost anything you could imagine, even old microwaves. I think that these folks have taken it a step further.

I was really impressed with the horns on this sheep.

They had to put a sign up to point out that there was a little library by here.

And you can see why. It looks like somebody left their safe out on the park bench.

Another ferry ride. This is actually where the route was supposed to stop, but I had to take the ferry across the river to get to my place for the night.

An inactive windmill of a different design.

Just down the road a little bit, this one was spinning away. It's really beautiful to see the craftsmanship that went into making these.

My bed tonight is in the town of Ottoland. There are small canals all over the place. It looks like it would be a fun place to kayak, but if you used your 13 foot kayak there would be very few places to turn around.

And some of the locals might not appreciate you. I got hissed at for getting too close to the family.