Grinding gravel

Jun 25 - Utica/Marcy NY (Lock 20) to Green Lake State Park: 49.6 miles + 14.7 miles shopping run

Best. Day. Ever. 

Ok, maybe not ever, but it was a Very Good Day.

First order of the day: Get. Coffee.

We determined the night before that we had no more coffee left. Closest coffeeshop to the Lock? 2 miles, in the opposite direction to the one we wanted to go, but No Problem.

Coffee and an egg sandwich at the Dunkin' Donuts would start the day off right. It was strange to experience the mania that is Dunkin' Donuts with cars pulling in and out and going through the drive-through. We sat quietly absorbing our caffeine in our biking gear out front all by ourselves in the sunshine  watching it all go by.

Then we biked back down the road to the lock where we returned to our little canal world cycling bubble.

The gravel canal path took us straight out of Utica along the canal until we reached the city of Rome. At Rome we swapped gravel paths for four-lane car-filled roads with traffic lights. Here, at one of the corners we ran across Fort stanwicx National Monument- an enormous earth-walled fort in the middle of town.

Old canal structure

Here, our turn by turn directions from Google that I had written out early in the morning let us down. 

A search for a left turn onto a "Charles Street" off a busy potholed 4 lane road split us up. Heather found a dilapidated canalside path with deep loose gravel. I found A sign to the "Erie Canal village" which I could not resist following. The view of the village from the road was a dilapidated set of buildings with a sign that was missing part of the words,  and an empty weed-filled parking lot.

I've got time, I'm going to explore. Just past the closed gift shop is the canal, and there behind the store near a small arched bridge over the canal is the new owner of this tired property, which turns out to extend for some ways on the other side of the canal with more buildings including a multiple enormous old houses,  a schoolhouse,  barns,  and the grassy footprint of a historic British fort from the French Indian  wars. 

The entrepreneurial new owner has big plans. When you come by you may see a huge smokehouse restaurant with a revitalized canal boat running up and down the canal, a train running on the 2 1/2 miles of narrow gauge Rail line, and people in historic costume working in the small village.

The city of Rome is where the Erie Canal construction began. Here the canal path follows the original old Erie Canal. Up until this point we were either alongside the Mohawk River or along the currently operating Erie Canal. Now we entered a bit of history. Today's canal goes up to Oneida Lake. The Erie Canal path follows the historical canal, past old aqueducts and abandoned stone structures. This was (IS) a massive feat of engineering.

And this historic canal path is fabulous gravel! We had mixed surfaces throughout, but now ALL gravel. 

Time to test out our gravel grinding bikes!  (See the gravel video!)

 We refueled in Canastota NY where we experienced an amazing food concept at the aptly named 'Toast'. This diner has a menu that included a selection of toppings for toast, each toast order is $2.50, encouraging one to experiment... The poached egg on whole wheat with pesto+parm was terrific, and the fried egg with hot sauce and honey was very unusual and more-ish.

Entrance to toast ... Awesome indeed! 

On the subject of food we've been trying to keep supplied by stopping at small convenience stores not too far from our route. Unfortunately these are few and far between and often not well-stocked. And so was the case in Canastota where dust covered canned chicken was not enticing and we ended up with only a can of instant coffee.

The path to Green Lake State Park went over a bridge from the canal and up a Very Steep Hill to our campsite.

The fuel from toast was not expired. Dinner was going to be couscous and powdered Parmesan. Sad.

We were on the outskirts of Syracuse, and finally within spitting distance of real stores, so I opted to dump everything from the bike and do a Trader Joe's run. 

Wow. Nothing like a naked bike after so long with it fully loaded, and I took full advantage of riding the gravel 😀. 

Trader joes bounty (which we must eat or carry)