Author: Greg Pezoldt

Camping behind the Hilltop Market worked out nicely. I was right there this morning to get some breakfast. 2 donuts and some OJ.

It is going to another sunny day of riding. An amazing day to be exact. No wind and warm.

If I though my legs were tired yesterday as I started today they screamed at me. I had to invoke one of Jens Voigt’s (a retired racer from Germany who has many great quotes) great sayings today. “Shut Up Legs!” I am not quite sure they heard me. They would make it though. Today was going to be a “moderately” short day. Less than 60 miles to Raquette Lake.

My legs were screaming at me this morning because I was going to ride into the Adirondacks. The hills leading into this beautiful area of New York were short but STEEP. I used some pretty low gearing to tackle them.

To get there, I followed the Moose River for most of the morning.

The Moose River Road ended in the “town” of McKeever where I planned to have lunch. It turns out that McKeever is nothing more than a point on a map. No services at all. So I had to ride another 9 miles to Thendara to look for lunch. Thendara and the neighboring town of Old Forge are in the heart of the Adirondacks and the Sunday tourist activity was all you needed to know that it was a fact.

I have to admit that it is really nice here. The roads are in great condition, the scenery is amazing, and the weather is perfect. It is a really a fantastic day to be riding.

And there is just a hint of the beginning of the fall foliage to come that is the hallmark of the area. I am not sure I will get to see it in all of its red, yellow, and orange glory, but maybe as I get a little more north into Maine I will get to see it. That would be the icing on the cake.

Leaving Old Forge, I began a trek along a string of lakes that would lead to Raquette Lake and my campground. I was a little disappointed with the lack of imagination for some of the names of some of the lakes though. First Lake, Second Lake, all the way up to Ejghth Lake. Really, was that the best they could do? But there are a lot of lakes though. Got to give them that much.

I finally got to Raquette Lake around 4:30. A pretty reasonable time to quit. Except the campground was closed! I think for general maintenance, but closed none the less. It would now be another 9 miles to Blue Mountain Lake to camp. Still a reasonable time to quit at 5:15, but a longer day.

I am beginning to wonder if there ever will be a short day. My legs might have something to say about that. Vermont is getting closer by the day and there is some serious climbing in Vermont. True mountains and four major climbs, the highest one a 2,500 foot climb to go over. It will be fun, but a challenge. Really though, I cannot wait to see them. But maybe after a short day!

The weather today is sunny and nice. I think I am going to get more than a few nice days now. That is so much better than the weather that I had around Lake Erie. I am looking forward to a nice day of riding.

Leaving Fulton, there were a few little hills to negotiate. My legs are really tired and they barked a little at me about the hills. I headed north and would get to see Lake Ontario again. The Great Lakes are pretty nice. Just like riding along the ocean.

Getting to Port Ontario, I stopped to see their old lighthouse.

The harbor was pretty busy with boats coming and going. Saturday and fantastic weather. What else would you rather be doing, right? Except riding a bicycle that is.

After Port Ontario, I said goodbye to the Great Lakes. I will be headed inland for good this time until I actually am in Maine.

Just after Port Ontario is Pulaski, NY. The Masons were having a fund raising lunch in the park today so I stopped and bought the BBQ chicken lunch. Pretty good and it really hit the spot.

After lunch, it would only be about 20 miles to the place I had in mind for camping on this short day. It would be about 3:00 when I would get there. Then this idea started to creep into my mind. What about going a little further today? 3:00 was pretty early to quit for the day actually. Well that was it. I would go on. My legs felt better as the day went on so that wasn’t an issue anymore.

The next area on my map that showed available camping was in West Leyden, NY, about another 20 miles. West Leyden it would be. There ended up being some pretty steep hills along that stretch and a brief rain shower for about 10 minutes to endure, but I got to West Leyden easily enough. I camped behind the Hilltop Market which they are nice enough to offer to cyclists and other campers for no charge.

So much for the short day. Maybe tomorrow!

No overcast skies today. It is sunny from the get go.

Today I will ride the last 4 miles of the Erie Canal that my routes takes. I think it actually travels for over 300 more miles and many people are riding the entire length.

After taking a wrong turn that made me do some wild single track I got back on course.

Once off the trail, I headed north onto some nice country roads that eventually ended up on the shores of Lake Ontario. This was the fourth of the 5 Great Lakes and made me slightly regret not having detoured in Wisconsin to see the fifth one, Lake Superior. I think I was within 30 miles of it at one point.

I got my first good look at Lake Ontario in Sodus Point, NY. It was when I went to see their old lighthouse.

Sodus Point is also where I ended up having lunch, right down on the waterfront in the old town.

The road turned inland again after that so it was country roads again which are really nice in New York.

It is funny the way some people perceive the roads. I was telling this lady at a fruit stand I stopped at that I was riding through Hannibal on my way to Fulton to camp for the evening. She said that there was a HUGE hill before I would get to Hannibal. I never found the huge hill. There were plenty of hills around Hannibal and the entire ride today, but nothing I would describe as huge. Funny.

I camped just outside of Fulton at Lake Neatuhwania. Don’t ask me to pronounce it. I have no idea, but it was a nice lake and campground. I even had my own apple tree in my campsite.

It had been a long day. I am thinking about taking it easy tomorrow and have a short day. That sounds like a good idea to me.

This morning it was wet from a heavy dew. I think this is going to be a consistant issue from here out. It is also a little overcast, but I think this will burn off shortly since the forecast is for sunny weather today. I really hope so.

I will be riding the canal trail or the parallel Hwy for the entire day. I hope to make it to Macedon since they have free camping along the trail like several other communities do. It will be a 70 mile day if all goes according to plan (remember what I said earlier about plans).

The other factor will be the boredom factor. The trail doesn’t change much so I might get off the trail just for a change of scenery. We will see about that though as things progress today.

One thing about the canal that I am curious about. I see personal boats on the canal, but I am not sure if there is any commercial shipping anymore. Also, many of the bridges are older. They are mostly draw bridges. The newer structures seem to have been built high enough over the water that they did not need to be raised to allow boat and ship traffic to pass under them.

It was fun to see the draw bridges operate though.

Another interesting thing about the canal is the bird life. There are lots of geese and ducks, but also herons and egrets. The herons are very skiddish while the geese almost have to herded off the trail so you can pass by.

The trail also runs through some nice country.

There are occasional trees along the bank which must have grown over the last 100 years or whatever many of years since the mules used to pull the boats and barges up and down the canal. Trees would have disrupted their ability to pull the watercraft so I am sure they were constantly cleared during that era.

The trail was not used much from my observation. Mostly people walking their dogs and the occasional jogger. That changed as I got close to Rochester. Rochester is a big city and trail and canal itself exploded with activity. People running, biking, boating, everything you can imagine. I was really surprised by the number of rowing shells on the water. I must have seen a dozen full 8 person crews practicing. I even saw a single paddler in a surf ski which is near and dear to me! I thought it was great to see the trail and canal being used. It is a fantastic resource that should be utilized.

On the outskirts of Rochester was an REI that I stopped at. It was right on the trail which I thought was a great idea (it also had a primary street access too).

One other thing about Rochester. The trail is paved through that stretch. I was thinking that it would be nice if the entire trail was paved, but also thought that the unpaved portions were smooth, had no chuck holes, pot holes, pavement cracks, heaves, spalling, or vertical displacements. It was right at that exact moment that I hit a huge upheaval in the pavement from a tree root that it actually popped both of my rear panniers off the rack and onto the trail pavement. I felt lucky it did not blow out my tires. Whew!

Soon enough, I had made it to Macedon and to my camping spot. I had ridden the trail all day and made good time and did not get bored at all. One reason is there are so many bridges along the canal and I enjoyed every single one of them. Once an engineer, always an engineer.

I got another geography lesson this morning. It turns out there is an extremely famous natural wonder that is just outside of Buffalo. Everyone has heard of Niagara Falls, but I had no idea it was so close to Buffalo. Well I wasn’t going to miss out on seeing that since I basically was riding right past it. Actually, I think the people at Adventure Cycling who made the route maps knew what they were doing and routed us here on purpose. So much so that their route actually goes through the Canadian side since it is supposed to have better views of the falls. I did not have my passport on this trip so I had to improvise a route on the American side but that was easy enough since there was a bike path right along the Niagara River that obviously lead right to the falls.

It was all very spectacular even though there were no attempts today at going over the falls in a barrel.

Going to see the falls and negotiating my way through the crowds and the city, I did not make very good time in the morning. I suppose that was to be expected. I hoped to make up for it in the afternoon. I finally got out of town and headed for Lockport, NY. Lockport is significant because it is the beginning of the Erie Canal. I will be riding on it for 90 miles before my route takes me off of it. There is a lot of history there.

The trail along the canal is not paved. It is mostly a compacted sand surface that is alright for my tires, but it is not as efficient for riding. I will not be able to maintain the same pace as I can on pavement. For that reason, I will have to see if I will ride the entire 90 miles or eventually deviate and ride the parallel Hwy 31.

Camping spots are not spaced out very well in this part of the ride. There was camping in Middleport and then again in another 24 miles down the trail. Because of my delays in Niagara Falls, I felt that I would be pushing it to ride those next 24 miles so I opted for the Middleport camping option. Plus, I got to quit a bit early today at 4:30 which is nice. The camping is free for cyclists and hikers and is right on the canal. My tent is within 20 feet of the canal. Good thing I don’t sleepwalk at night.

After the rest day, I was ready to ride! When I woke up though, the weather wasn’t on the same page as me. It was still raining even though the weather said it was only supposed to be cloudy, but NO rain in the forecast. It wasn’t raining very hard and I figured it was going to stop at any time so I took off. It stopped raining within 30 minutes thank goodness.

I am going to transition to a new map today and I hadn’t really looked at it yet to see what lied ahead for me. Well, it was riding through Buffalo, NY. Not a big deal but a surprise to me since I thought I was going to ride to the south of it.

One thing I did know, I was going to ride through Orchard Park, NY. I knew there was something about Orchard Park that sounded familiar to me but I couldn’t figure it out at all. There was Menlo Park, Hyde Park, but what was it about Orchard Park?

As I was riding and looking for a place to have lunch, I figured it out. Well, I should say the answer came to me as I rounded a corner on the road.

The “Buffalo” Bills professional football team has their stadium in Orchard Park! That was it. Problem solved.

Now on the new map it was on to Buffalo and past to find a place to camp. Riding through Buffalo was easy enough. I felt like it took a long time to get out of the east side though. I rode on Hwy 384 for a long time before I felt I was out of the city.

I identified a KOA campground on Grand Island as my camping destination for the evening. To get there, I had to ride over a huge bridge that carried Interstate 190, my first time EVER riding on the interstate system. I did not have to ride on the shoulder though. They had a separated bike and pedestrian path on the bridge so it was stressless.

At the KOA I camped next to a young couple from Massachusetts who just happened to be moving to the Seattle area. That was a bit of a coincidence we all thought.

It was good to get back on the road again.

The rain from last night continues into this morning. I am taking a rest day. It has been about 2 weeks since Mackinac Island so I am ready for a rest day as well.

Here are some ride statistics to date:

Total Miles: 4,908

National Parks: 6

National Monuments: 4

State Parks: ? (sorry, I lost track on this)

Crossed Continental Divide: 7 Times

Highest Elevation: 12,187 Ft ASL

Notes: It is not lost on me that you can ride across the country in 3,000 miles or so. When I first started the ride I never calculated the exact distance I would ride, but figured it would be around 4,000 miles because I intended to take a longer route. I now estimate the entire ride will now be around 5,750 miles which does not include any riding I do after reaching Acadia National Park.

So the big storm never came last night. The weather report now called for rain around 11:00 this morning. So obviously the weather was anything but great. Overcast skies that threatened rain at any time.

I planned to ride from town to town today and re-access at each town whether to continue or hole up for the rest of the day.

Although the wind was still blowing, it did not seem as strong as yesterday which was good. I was able to tap out the miles all the while watching the weather.

Although I was only in Pennsylvania for a short time, I must have been in their wine country since the adjacent land today was predominately planted in grapes.

Maybe this was an extension of the famed New York wine region. I am not sure about this at all.

And then just like that, I was in New York. The grape vineyards continued, but I also had another welcoming gift in New York.

Brand new pavement. So new it did not even gave the stripes painted yet. New pavement is a pure joy to ride on. The best.

I rode along side a runner out for a training run this morning. Of course he asked about my ride, but he also told me about a person he met the week before who was ROLLER BLADING across the country. From San Francisco to New York. That is pretty dang impressive.

I went off route 2 miles to a town named Westfield to find a restaurant for lunch. It was an old style diner that was fun to eat at.

After lunch, the weather continued to hold up so I kept pressing onward. First to Dunkirk, and then onto Irving. Irving was going to be the end of the day no matter what but the weather was starting to deteriorate as well. Rain was imminent so I got a room in the first motel I could find.

And the rain eventually came. It is supposed to last well into tomorrow and maybe even till Tuesday. We’ll see if I ride tomorrow.

I actually have a new plan for today. What a surprise.

This morning is overcast and the wind is blowing. Pretty hard today and if course it is mostly a head wind. The plan is to put my head down, lean into the wind and put in as many miles as possible today.

I am still riding along Lake Erie and it is rough seas out there due to the wind. Would not want to be sailing today. Before the day is over, I might regret riding a bike today too.

Around 11:30 I started thinking about lunch. There was a town just ahead named Geneva-On-The-Lake. With a name like Geneva I thought it might have some up-scale nice bistro or cafes. Boy was I wrong. It was a tourist town with row upon row of cheap food joints and hundreds and hundreds of motorcycles. I couldn’t ride out of that town fast enough. The bad news was that it was another 10 mikes to Ashtabula, the next town, about 45 minutes and I was starving.

Just outside if tie , i stopped at a roadside fruit stand and bought a couple of ripe peaches. Next I found a nice place after only 7 miles! And they were known for their pie. And of course everybody knows by now that I like pie! I had the peach pie of course.

Fueled up, I continued bucking the headwind for the town of Erie. To get there, I needed to cross the state line.

My stay in Pennsylvania would not be long. I am riding through this little sliver that rubs along the lake, only about 45 miles.

I got to Erie, PA around 7:00. I stayed at a campground near the port. It was pretty nice. The spotlessly clean showers were the best part. Some of the people staying at the campground were interested in my trip. They ended up bringing me a cocktail that I enjoyed with my dinner. That was greatly appreciated!

It was a long day. I put in 80 miles into the wind. Then on top of all that, a storm was supposed to hit in the middle of the night. I figured I could ride out any storm easy enough and if the rain and wind continued during the next day, I could just pack up and head for a motel in town to dry out.

So I hit the sack waiting for the storm to hit and seeing what tomorrow would bring.

Today I had a plan! Have I ever mentioned that a key to an enjoyable bicycle tour is to not get upset if you don’t meet the goal of your plans. I think we all know where this is leading.

The weather is still unsettled at best. The sky is overcast but it hasn’t rained yet. At least it is cooler and the humidity seems like it has dropped also. I mentioned yesterday that I wanted to get through Cleveland today with time to get far enough away that I could get to a camping spot. That spot was in a town called Perry which as far as I can tell is the first camping opportunity on route.

So heading out, it was good riding. It sprinkled just a bit but not enough to even put on my rain jacket. And I got to Cleveland in a reasonable time also.

Maneuvering through Cleveland was pretty easy because there was a great bike path to follow. It went right along the water except getting over the Cuyahoga River (the river that caught on fire in the 70’s). Getting over the river actually brought me right into downtown so I had lunch right in the shadow of Indian Stadium at an Irish Pub, Flannery’s where I had the Shepard’s Pie.

After lunch and heading out of the city, I went by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The HOF had a great vibe associated with it. Classic rock music blaring outside and lots of very excited people milling around. A carnival atmosphere.

So far, my plan for the day is going well. I had plenty of time to ride the remaining 40 some miles to Perry. Along the way, I passed through the town of Euclid. It is an ordinary town in every way except that by my calculation, it would be exactly 1000 miles to Acadia National Park from there. 3 months ago leaving La Push on day 1, that would sound like an impossible distance to contemplate. Now it seems like the home stretch. Less than 3 weeks of riding to go.

My plan began to unravel in Euclid as well. It started when I noticed that my rear wheel was out of “true” again. I stopped to look for another broken spoke but did not find any more. Then upon a closer inspection, I noticed that my wheel had numerous cracks in it. My wheel was getting ready to catastrophically fail. Not good.

You can see the crack in the rim actually pulling the spoke nipple from the rim. There were at least 7 cracks that I discovered.

I found a bike shop in Mentor-by-the-Lake that was open. They did not have a wheel or the necessary components to fix my wheel but they made a lot of calls around and found a shop that did. Bill Gibson at Blue Sky Bicycles has an entire wheel that would be an exact match for my 1981 geometry. An incredible stroke of good fortune. I had to ride 7 miles to get there and I was out the door within an hour of getting there. An amazing “pit stop”!

The only real problem was that I was not going to make it to Perry and I would have to motel it again tonight.

So my plan failed today. I rode enough miles to have gotten to Perry, but not all in the right direction so I ended up 15 miles short. That is life on the road. But I will live to make another plan for tomorrow!