September 28, 2023
Final Day
Palmyra to Rochester; Erie Canalway trail, Loch 30 in action, box violation, caffeine deficiency
Our Liberty House host is also the Palmyra town clerk, so breakfast was served early to facilitate her work schedule. Hot banana chocolate muffins and stewed apples whetted our appetites for blueberry French Toast, eggs and sausage, accompanied by coffee and OJ. Truly delicious!
Once we loaded up the bikes we backtracked through town. Palmyra is full of churches-it was the western terminus for the Erie Canal for many years until the canal was extended to Buffalo. Canal workmen and their families came from many locations, backgrounds and religions settled in Palmyra. The town is also considered the birthplace of Mormonism.
Leaving town we passed part of an old aqueduct, which our host told us is structurally in very bad shape.
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Shortly we turned onto the Erie Canalway trail, which is part of the Empire State trail.
The Canalway trail is heavily used by cyclists and walkers. We passed other cycle-tourists and day riders, runners and walkers through the rest of the day. The trail surface is primarily smooth hardpacked fine gravel, similar to decomposed granite. As it passes through towns and villages, it was often asphalt.
We passed several locks and we were lucky at Lock 30 to see it in action.
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We saw numerous private boats motoring up the canal and wondered if is still used commercially. Then we saw a loaded barge being pushed by a tug, answering our question.
We also came across a few of these apparent vertical lift dams:
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After about 24 miles of riding along the canal, we arrived at the intersection of the canal and the Genesee river.
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Here we turned onto the Genesee river trail and followed all the way to downtown Rochester. Eventually we exited the trail and rode about 4 blocks on surface streets back to the Holiday Inn.
Once we checked in, we retrieved our bike boxes from the store room and were dismayed that they had been broken into while we were gone and damaged in the process. Fortunately nothing of real value was stolen (we think) but someone definitely sifted through the few things we left in them. We repaired the broken support pieces as best we could, using gorilla tape, then packed our bikes and resealed the boxes. They are scheduled to be picked up by UPS sometime tomorrow.
One other ding to the Holiday Inn-it is almost impossible to get caffeinated coffee pods for the in-room Keurig machines. They were out 3 1/2 weeks ago and still are.
The four of us had a nice dinner to celebrate the end of what has been a really great bike tour. The weather has been fantastic-we only experienced 3 instances of light rain for short periods of time and no real extremes of temperature or humidity. The people of upstate New York have been friendly and welcoming. The quality of the road surfaces is amazing, especially compared to what we usually ride. The scenery here is spectacular, between the lakes, canyons, gorges and waterfalls, not to mention all of the beautiful rural farmland we rode through. We rode along 7 of the 11 named finger lakes, (Conesus, Canandaigua, Cayuga, Keuka, Seneca, Skaneateles and Owasco) and two smaller, “fingerlette” lakes, (Waneta and Lamoka) for a total of 9. We ate too well; all of us think we have gained weight on this tour.
We hope you enjoyed this journal; once I return home to a computer, I hope to add daily RWGPS maps. Thank you for reading! Cheers!
Today's ride: 29 miles (47 km)
Total: 523 miles (842 km)
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