Where Did All These Hills Come From?

Hey all:

We realized that after climbing hills in the Adirondack's and eastern Green Mountains these last few days, our climbing legs are a little out of use. From the Rockies in western Montana through the Erie Canal Trail in Western, New York there are hills, but they are not the kind that suck the life out of you by going straight up and straight down every mile for the duration of your day's ride. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it feels as if we are just starting out again. Jake, of course, is climbing the hills quite easily and making fun of his aging father.

The Erie Canal trail was a mixed blessing. Even though the surface was mostly crushed limestone, which reduced our speed by quite a bit, the first day was quite nice. The weather was fair, the path flat and free of traffic, and the scenery was beautiful. We camped along the canal with a bunch of people who were on a boating holiday. Most of them were friends already and meet up at the same spot each year.

The second day started with heavy rain that kept us in our tent until 11:00. We then decided to bike in the rain on paths that had gotten slower and soggier. At one point, the path narrowed to a four inch strip of mud, bordered on both sides by four foot high weeds - before it abruptly ended in a wall of weeds. We had to back out into a business park soaking wet and covered in seed pods. Needless to say, we were both a little fussy! We backtracked a few miles to pick up the canal trail on the southern side, before getting a little lost in Rochester.

That night we limped into a camping area on the canal that was a little too seedy-looking even for our tastes and decided to push on to a hotel in Palmyra. When we got there (just as it was getting dark) we discovered that they were hosting a Mormon youth group and had no rooms at the inn. We prayed upon their Christian charity and were allowed to put up our tent behind the hotel, where the Mormon youth paraded back and forth all night and into the next morning (if I didn't know better, I would think that they were looking for more golden tablets).

We followed the coast of Lake Ontario for a bit before we continued east - going up and down steep hills and in and out of small Adirondack towns. We crossed paths with Wally & Jenny again and rode with them off-and-on for a couple of days. We crossed the ferry from Ticonderoga into Vermont and climbed at least 10,000 feet  into Middlebury (one of my favorite Vermont towns - and colleges). We have been holed up in the Middlebury inn for a couple of nights, in part because Jake had a mechanical problem and we had to have an idler overnighted from Oregon to have it repaired. Susan came to visit us at the inn and we had a nice dinner at an Indian restaurant with a great couple who are hiking the Appalachian Trail. It was a lot of fun trading stories with folks who weren't biking. I was jealous of the fact that they have seen bears and we haven't!

If it's not pouring in the morning we will say goodbye to Susan and head over Middlebury Gap and bike to either Bethel or Sharon. Jake wants to visit with a friend from his Ecuador trip who lives in Thetford, so we don't have to bike more than 40 miles a day for the next two days. At our current pace, we should be in Lubec by the 17th or 18th. There are, however, a few hills to climb between here and there...

Take care,

Rob & Jake