Repeated rides of the out and back route on the Schuylkill Trail have become quite boring. Cycling at the shore is fine, but we’ve already done much of the Stone Harbor/Cape May area, and it is almost always windy in one direction. We thought maybe a mini vacation to an area with a rail trail might provide level riding and some interesting scenery, so my travel-agent-wannabe wife went web surfing.
I had thought of the Erie Canal towpath in the past, but Sue found that the Bicycle Route 5 of the New York State’s Department of Transportation provided a signed, on-road route that paralleled the canal from Buffalo to Albany. She then tried to find a portion with the desirable profile, and she came up with a long stretch heading east from Verona to Little Falls.
We have never been the type of folks who need posh lodgings, but during our family travels across the U.S. and Europe, Sue has shown an incredible knack for finding hotels or apartments that were true diamonds in the rough. She has come up with some places in which I have almost felt guilty about staying, since a bed and a shower was pretty much all we needed - we were intending to spend most of our time out of the room anyway!
Of course I’m talking about being in locations that are beautiful in their own right, but two wonderful accommodations immediately come to mind, in Milan and Venice, but my favorite of her “finds” was in Paris . I remember talking to a gentleman from North Carolina while we were standing on the Champs Élysées, taking in the final stage of the 2009 Tour de France. He was astounded to hear that we were paying as much for a week in a fantastic apartment in Montmartre as he was for two nights in a downtown hotel (photo on left is Sacré-Coeur, just around the corner from our apartment).
Certainly I am not trying to compare the Herkimer Motel in any way with the worst hotels in France or Italy, because it would take me a split second to choose the latter locations, sight unseen, but I wanted to acknowledge Sue’s efforts. The motel was just what we needed, with very friendly staff, continental breakfast, internet access and a nice pool, although the unexpectedly mild temperatures made swimming unnecessary. The room also had a small refrigerator and a microwave, so that we could store and prepare some meals, since there was no guarantee of gluten free food for me anywhere nearby.
I know this wouldn’t appeal to everyone, but an added perk for me, the railfan, was that the former New York Central (now CSX) mainline ran right behind the motel. By simply stepping out our door and walking out a few feet I could witness a regular parade of freights, or an occasional Amtrak train, passing on the bridge over the nearby street. The average motel customer was glad that the railroad was completely separate from grade crossings, so all you would hear was the low engine rumble, no air horns!
In the days leading up to our departure, Sue was concerned about changing precipitation percentages in the forecast, but I reminded her that the weather in this region is always erratic, since it is affected by the Great Lakes. I remember vacationing in the Finger Lakes region many times as a child, and it seemed we always had swings from day to day, sunny or rainy. Sue booked a couple of days in Herkimer to give us a chance of at least one nice day for cycling.
Tuesday ended up being absolutely perfect, with white fluffy clouds and temperatures in the high seventies. It had actually gotten down into the forties the night before, so we waited for it to warm up a bit, and started getting ready around 11:00. Our plan heading west sounded rather exotic, reaching towns named Utica, Rome and Verona, but the majority of towns in this area have seen better days economically, and much of the urban areas were quite sad.
The prettier sections were in between the towns, with the idyllic Erie Canal nearby, lush farmlands lining its banks and steep hills edging the Mohawk River valley to the north and south. We had initially thought of riding our cross bikes on the combination gravel and paved Canal towpath, but we were glad we went with the road route and the variety of sites it provided, good or bad.
Because of my interests in railroads and architecture, I try to visit and take pictures of train stations all over the country. My “collection” numbers over 500, and I took the opportunity to see some along the way, which we used as little breaks for our legs and butts! Some of the smaller stations were in a bit of disrepair, but the buildings in Utica (photos above) and Rome (photos below), which are Amtrak stops, proved to be very impressive inside and out.
Little Falls is an attractive, small city that lies in a narrow, rocky gorge on the Mohawk River. The city has an interesting railroad station and a neat business district down by the riverside, apart from the main city up on the hillside. Nearby is the Erie Canal’s Lock 17 (photo below) which, at the time of its completion in 1916, boasted the highest raise/lower of boats in the world at 40.5 feet. We were lucky to arrive in time to see the lock in action, as a canal maintenance boat was making its way east towards St. Johnsville on the Mohawk River’s more navigable sections.
After a tricky walk over the lock’s bridge, carrying our bikes down a couple flights of metal-grated stairs, we weaved up a long access ramp to the canal path. We weren’t sure what the surface would be like, but despite an older, bumpy paved surface for the first couple hundred yards, we enjoyed a pristine sheet of asphalt on the brand new trail for about two miles, until the path abruptly ended on Route 167. The highway rolled up and down considerably back towards Herkimer, but we were happy to find the downhills were much longer in that direction.
Later we were glad to have found the motivation to get off our butts and see some new things, but more importantly we hoped the ride would aid our recovery from the long trip on Tuesday and improve our conditioning for the BIG RIDE later this month.
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