I slept like a rock last night. Best night of sleep I’ve had in weeks, in fact. We stayed at the Vintage Gardens B&B in Medina. If you’re looking for a place along the canal, I highly recommend them. The accommodations were good, the hosts were great, and they took good care of us.
Before heading to bed, Billy and I looked over the forecast. It looked like we were going to be in rain all day, some storms, high winds with gusts up to 60 MPH, and possibility of hail. We talked it over and decided that we would weigh things in the morning and figure out what to do then. There’s a fine line between adventure and stupidity sometimes and I wanted to make sure we stayed on the safe side.
This morning, right after doing my morning prayer, I turned to the various weather apps. It looked like the storms were moving out to later in the day with one or two major lines coming through. We discussed it and decided we would get going immediately after breakfast, keep our breaks to a minimum, and keep our eyes on the weather.
We rolled out of the B&B at about 8:30 with 65-ish miles ahead. Storms were on the radar, but we had a decent chance of getting far along before they caught up to us. The wind forecast was accurate, however. We faced stiff headwinds and sidewinds for most of the day. On top of that, the panniers on our bikes sort of act like sails to catch the winds.
Very shortly after leaving Newark, the Erie Canal route moves to NY Route 31 for about 20 miles. The good news is that pavement is faster than the towpath crushed gravel, and Route 31 has very generous shoulders along this area for riding. The bad news is that much of the route was out in the open farmland with little wind break. There were some parts where we were in lower gears, heads down, pushing hard, to go 6-8 MPH. Nevertheless, we persevered and made our way past Seneca Falls, Port Byron, and a few other little towns I’ve since forgotten.
During a short rest stop and snack break, we pulled up the weather. My initial reaction was “Oh !@!@#” as we saw a giant line of red and yellow coming our way. We decided to do our best to outrun the storm and see if we could get to Syracuse before it caught us. Our snack break was short.
We made good time as we pushed east. Around the town of Jordan we felt our first drops of rain. It didn’t seem too bad. We put on our rain gear and started rolling again. The rains picked up a bit, but weren’t too strong a few miles later. We only had about 10-15 miles left to go, so we were thinking we would just ride on.
When we hit the town of Camilllus, there was a picnic pavilion that seemed like a good place to take a break. We pulled up the weather and I asked my wife, Stephanie, to take a look at the weather for us. Shortly after we pulled under the picnic area roof, the rain turned into a solid storm and the alerts said there could be hail. Stephanie told us the storm would go past over about an hour, so we decided to take a long break. JB took a nap on a table, I ate some food out of my bags, and we all just listened to the rain. It was actually a pretty nice break.
About an hour later, the rains stopped completely and we got back underway. The trail was a bit wet but not bad. We mostly just dodged puddles with the occasional unavoidable splash of mud puddle.
To get into Syracuse, you exit the trail at the state fairgrounds, then climb up a hill that overlooks Onondaga lake. You get rewarded with some nice views at the top.
From there, it is a little tricky to follow the signage through Syracuse into downtown. I had GPS tracks loaded into my cycling computer, so it wasn’t too hard to follow. If you’re not using a GPS, you may want to make sure you have a good map of the route with you and keep an eagle-eyed view out for the signs.
We arrived at our hotel a little after 3PM in good spirits, not too wet, but definitely in need of showers and food. After getting cleaned up, we met JB’s friends Jessie and Joe for dinner at the Syracuse Dinosaur BBQ. That’s twice in a week. Mmmm….
Tonight’s laundry night, so I’m sitting here blogging away while waiting for 100 miles of gunk to get washed off our clothes. Tomorrow we head to Utica, about 62 miles east of here.
It was a good day on two wheels and we’re looking forward to hopefully better weather tomorrow.
I didn’t take many pictures today because we were minimizing our stops. So here are some of the best ones of the day. Enjoy.
May the Lord bless you and keep you safe among all the trials that come your way.
— Dcn. Matt
Deacon Matt's Blog 