Winding Roads

Through eastern Montana, North Dakota and western Minnesota we enjoyed long stretches of straight roads through the farms and ranches of the American West.

Then we enjoyed lots of generally flat, isolated paths like the Lake Wobegon Trail (Minnesota), Tomorrow River Trail (Wisconsin), Pere Marquette (Michigan), Welland Canal (Ontario) and the fabulous Erie Canal Trail through western New York. Each of them thrilling in their own way.

But the last few days riding from Sodus Point, NY through Old Forge and into Schroon Lake, gave us a whole new taste of curvy, hilly, tree lined-and-canopied, lovely-little-town-around-every-corner riding, that you’d expect in upstate New York. So much fun! At one point I said to my riding mates that whoever designed these roads deserved a medal, at least from a cyclist’s perspective.

Now that we’ve crossed into Vermont, we expect that will remain the case, with just some nuanced changes in culture and feel.

It’s hard to believe that we have fifty riding days under our belts with only eight more to go. In most ways, I don’t think any of us want it to end.