Day 132 Westport to Bolton's Landing, New York: Tired, but what a ride!

September 9, 2011

We reluctantly left the wonderful campground, saying goodbye to Ken and Rhonda. The road continued hilly and used up our energy. We had figured on making at least 80 km per day, but in hills the km creep by so slowly. To save strength we walked some hills that were actually ok to pedal. Too bad Ken and Rhonda later passed us in their car while we were briefly pushing.

The weather was good, though, and the ride enjoyable despite the hills. In fact you actually see and think more when grinding up a hill than while whizzing along.

An idiosyncratic house in the middle of nowhere, South of Westport

By the time we reached a farm store at Crown Point, we were really ready to stuff some donuts, apples, coffee, and anything else they had into our systems to try to generate hill climbing power.

We did not buy this tee shirt. Any chance of getting the Adirondack Mountains without the hills?

This ipod is not functional. I have picked up several ipods and iphones by the road. Of course all are wrecked. But why did the people toss these out of their cars?

Farm store at Crown Point, had baking and many apple varieties in a proper cool storage.

Apples seem to be really big in upstate New York

As it turned out, the hills moderated a bit from Crown Point to beyond Ticonderoga. However we knew that at Sabbath Day Point the road cut inland across a peninsula inhabited by a mountain - Tongue Mountain. Out plan was to find a place to stay before the big hill, but there was no place. So, we just went for it. We supposed that if forced by darkness we could find a place to put our tent by the road side.

This part of our tour is a bit like a final exam - it has hills, traffic, bad shoulders ((but also some good shoulders and great scenery).

Lake George has taken over as the roadside view.

Our plan is to use four of these to power us over Tongue Mountain.

There is no way to show how steep a steep hill is in a photo. But that school bus is way down there!

We did find some pullouts and even one spot with picnic tables, but we were so beat that perversely we slogged on, hoping that a motel would pop up. One or two motels did pop up, but they were isolated with no food, and now food was a big part of our equation too.

After hours on Tongue Mountain we hit the resort town of Bolton Landing in the dark.

The delivery man here gave us some pizza that kept us alive long enough to find a motel out on the dark highway.

With the pizza to go on, we headed off down the dark road out of town. People had assured us that there were lots of motels out there. There were, but they seemed to no be for daily rental - rather they had been converted as efficiency units for longer term rentals.

We finally did find one that had a place for us. Wow, even with a bath.

It had been 92 of the toughest kilometers we have done. But we really felt as sense of accomplishment. We think the hills may be a bit less ahead, so we are pretty confident we will make it to Schenectady in good time. For now, though, we are not setting the alarm.

Today's ride: 92 km (57 miles)
Total: 7,278 km (4,520 miles)

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