4000 and climbing

We hit 4000 miles yesterday, wow!!!!  We have also hit fall big time, in one day went from summer to frost and chilly mornings and we have hit the big big hills again.  The Adirondacks have been prepping us for the green and white mountains.  Tomorrow we finish NY at Fort Ticonderoga and take a ferry to Vermont.  Riding through upstate NY has been hilly, with lots of lakes and fall foliage, it brings back memories of childhood and young adulthood when time was spent around Lake George, NY.  Our lodging has been quite variable, warm showers, and fishing lodge as mentioned before, couple nights ago we put our tent up in an old barn with a huge kitchen and rec room on the floor below, great find of a campground.  Last night we stayed in an RV, it was a great opportunity to see if we would ever like to travel in one; I'm not really ready at this time.  Tonight's lodging is at Jellystone campground in North Hudson, their off  season cabin rate was just right.

Making our way across New York

We rode for a day along the Erie Canal...and found that really cool!  Mostly we rode on the towpath, where the horses used to pull the barges.  In some areas the canal was dug into the ground and in others the sides of the canal were embankments so that the water level was above the adjacent land, and sometimes the adjacent streets and homes.  It sorta reminded us of Holland, but we didn't have any chocolate or beer that day!  There were lots of drawbridges and we saw several sailboats with their masts stepped (stowed horizontally) motoring along.

That night we stayed with our second "warm showers" hosts, this time in Rochester.  Brian met us on the trail...riding a fat tire bike!!! And escorted us through the city on a labrinth of trails and streets to their  home.  Brian and Karen are super bikers and super gracious.  After enjoying their hospitality and spending the night, Karen escorted us, via a beautiful route, back to our Adven Cycling bike route.

Other New York adventures have included Nancy's front gears stopped working and visiting a bike shop where they were fixed, pronto; flat tire; camping at a private campground mostly inhabited by seasonal campers (snowbirds); another flat tire in a big windstorm so it was hard to find the puncture; staying at a fishing lodge...that had seen better days...to wait out a storm and discovered that Captain Jack's, across the street, had a Customer Appreciation buffet!!!  All you can eat...as long as you are an omnivore!!! (Nancy had a nice salad).

Great ride today, 63 miles, two hours of rain in the middle and we are camped on the shore of Lake Ontario at a state park near Port Ontario.  Coming up soon: the Adirondacks!!!

Another Road Side Attraction

What a week, we've been in Canada for the past week.  We crossroad over Lake Erie from Marine City MI on a small car ferry to Sombre Ontario.  Sombra is a sleepy tiny town with  1 restaurant, a very small variety store and a great seasonal RV park.  We were kind of the outsiders at the campground there with our little tent amongst the RVs with their porches, barbecue grills and lights, but as in many campgrounds the host found us fascinating or pitiful and  gave us special treatment.  We were provided with lawn chairs for the night and given an RV sight much closer to the bathrooms than a regular tent site.  At another campground the manager suggested we cmp by the pavilion with an awesome view of  Lake Erie, we could use the pavilion lights if we needed to read and camp under it if it started to rain, the regular sites were not nearly as grand!  One day we did have a shocker after biking about 60 miles we got to the campground to find it was closing that day and we were unable to camp there, to our good fortune we we only had to back track about 5 easy miles.  Today was our final day in Canada we ended with a ride through Niagra Falls, it was quite stunning coming from the south on the Canadian side and then Canada has beautiful gardens, preserves, butterflie conservatory and a number of trams and sight seeing boats, we were entertained for about 20 miles of riding, it was also very multicultural with all of the visitors.  We are ending our day camping behind the Widewater drive in restaurant in Lockport NY along the Erie Canal.  When "Marty" bought the place 5 years ago the prevvious owner offered free camping to cyclist, so Marty has contined the tradition.  To support our great host we had a giant order of fries when we got here, a fast food supper with some ice cream to top it off, not our usual healthy dinner, but we wanted to appreciate a great act of kindness.

Across the Thumb

Michigan, they say, looks like a mitten...that is, if you ignore the Upper Penninsula (UP) and you are looking at the palm of your right hand.  Anyways, this is day 10 of biking since we left Chicago and we have crossed the palm, from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, and now we are crossing the thumb which is really a Penninsula sticking into Lake Huron.
Our route continues to offer remarkable variety...corn and soybean and sugar beet fields, rail trails, small towns, and interesting mid-sized towns.  We saw a bear!!! On a rail trail a couple of days ago.  People know they are around but no one we have talked to has ever seen one.  Nancy. Figured they must be around because we have seen so many bear silhouettes as lawn ornaments!
Last night we camped at Jellystone Park in Frankenmuth.  The campground was very nice...we had a "rustic" site which meant we only had 20amp electric service.  The town was a cheesy (IMHO) Barvarian themed town famous for chicken dinners...honestly.  We really enjoyed it.
Today we rode 65 miles and are staying at the Sweet Dreams Motel ($45, including tax) in the town of Yale, population 2000 or so, priceless.
Tomorrow we expect to take a short ride on a small ferry and cross cover to Canada so we can ride along the north shore of Lake Erie; we should return to the states in about a week at Niagra Falls.
The Paul Simon of my youth sang: Cathy, I said as we boarded the Greyhound in Pittsburg, Michigan seems like a dream to me now; it took me 4 days to hitchhike from Saginaw; I've gone to look for America.
And I suppose we have.

We're Back on Route

We're back to our original route and no more plotting routes.  We are currently in Michigan, we crossed Lake Michigan on the ferry from Manitowoc WI to Ludington MI on Friday afternoon.  In general the 5 days we took to get from Chicago to Manitowoc went pretty well, a good bit was on trails, though we did have one memorable day.  It started poorly when it took us 45 minutes to find the trail to get started, it seemed if we could take a wrong turn that day we did.  We had a few tense moments when we cycled through a section on the outskirts of Milwaukee - my first clue was when I went into a convenience store and the cashiere was totally glassed in, shortly after that we encountered 3 young boys with big guns on the trail, we weren't sure whether the guns were real or not, but we rode as fast as we could, no need to dawdle!  We ended up cycling about 64 miles that day.  Tonight we are camped in a city park in the town of Claire, Mi,  we are enjoying the pitter patter of rain on our tent,  dinner was snacks in the tent, the rain started just before we were going to cook dinner, no pavillion or shelter to stay out of the rain.  Our days ride varied with hills and a great stretch of straight away, a total of 69 miles!

On the road again

Day 2 - 48 scenic miles.  Greater Chicago / northeast Illinois has a lot of nature preserves and bike trails but it was challenging for us to string them together...but we did!  Even so, it felt good to get back to Wisconsin (we have good bike maps) and the rolling farmland and many rail trails!  We are getting our bike legs back and it's great to be rolling again!

A Break and Back

We're back.  Since we last wrote we left Wisconsin and entered into IL, met a great bike mechanic/ shop manager who helped navigate a route to Naperville ( burb of  Chicago) fix my brakes and made an incredible dinner for us, we stayed in a quaint Inn in Oregon, IL, witnessed a drug deal on our ride to Naperville and took the train to and back from Denver for a family wedding.  We have been out of the saddle for a little over 2 weeks.  How easy it was to slip back into urban living, my cousin and his wife were our Chicago hosts who really contributed to that easy switch.  I went shopping for wedding duds and Chris borrowed items from a number of family members.  The wedding was great fun, lots of parties, visiting and memorable times.  We stayed an extra couple of days and visited old rugby friends in Grand Junction and Arvada CO and revisited Fort Collins.  Today was our first day back bicycle touring, we didn't leave until this afternoon, rode through a couple of down pours and made it to our destination by 6:30PM - how nice it will be when we get back to our route and don't have to find our routes, today though all worked out well, doing about 3/4 of our ride on rail trails.  Tomorrow we continue north re- entering WI with the goal to reach the mid east edge to cross Lake Michigan