Day 80: Medina, NY to Pittsford, NY

Aug 25 blog

53 miles

3,342 miles so far

The forecast for today was light rain, and it had rained most of the night. Since the plan was to ride on the Erie Canal all the way to Pittsford, we were a little concerned about the trail conditions. We had read that the trail can get a little soft and muddy when it has rained. We imagined it wouldn’t be much fun on our heavy, fully-loaded bikes.

We had breakfast at the Coffee Pot Cafe where we met a father and son who were riding the other direction on the canal from Albany to Buffalo. They asked about where we were riding, and I asked them how the trail conditions were. They said that they had ridden in the rain the day before and that the trail was fine - not muddy.

Well, I guess the conditions worsened, as the rain got heavier through the night. We spent a lot of time today dodging and weaving around puddles and mud traps!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s commentary, we ran into the LA couple on the trail, as they pulled up on their speedy gravel bikes while we took a rest stop. We learned that they were also planning on stopping in Pittsford tonight.

We stopped in Brockport for our lunch break. As we turned up the street, we could see the LA couple by their bikes outside the coffee shop waving. We went to the Port Pocket & Deli where we ordered chili cheese dogs. I guess I didn’t realize that they were “foot long” dogs. We quickly realized our mistake, took a few bites, and made our way to the coffee shop.

We also ran into another couple, Dave and Barb, bike touring on the canal. They were from Delaware, had done a one to two-week bike tour every year for the last twelve years, and were now doing their epic cross-country tour on the Northern Tier route. As we were riding similar daily distances, we figured that we might be seeing a lot of them over the coming days. They planned on completing the entire route ending in Bar Harbor.

We also met an older man walking along the canal. He told us that he had been a wilderness ranger in the Adirondacks and is the author of several books. He told us his name but said we would more likely remember the title of his first book of the series, “Excuse me sir..Your socks are on fire!”

We rolled into Pittsford which is a really nice town along the canal. We stayed in the Del Monte Lodge Renaissance hotel which was just off the trail and a short walk from many of the restaurants along the canal. We ate dinner at Aladdin’s Natural Eatery, a Greek restaurant, where we again ran into the LA gravel riders!

One of the many bridges along the canal