Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
– Country Roads by John Denver

After a lovely double zero in Cooperstown visiting Vanessa and her cousins Leane and Tom, It was time to start heading home. Only 287 miles to go. After Mohawk, the Erie Canalway became primarily paved. It was fast and peaceful and beautiful until I had to say goodbye to the bike path in Amsterdam NY.

My path home is the “less hills” route from Google Maps which goes quite a ways north in Vermont. I’m hoping that this would not be a mistake as Google has this awful tendency of treating gravel roads like nice paved roads which results in a planned easy ride becoming an adventure in perseverance and swearing. Well, there’s always pushing the bike and camping by the side of the road if needed. I better get some extra food tomorrow.

The first steep hill in Amsterdam, NY wasn’t a good omen. It was a crazy paved sidewalk that wound through a copse of woods at over 10%. I would have taken a picture or 2 but knew that if I did, there was no way of starting up again. Complaining isn’t peddling so up I went, standing on my pedals in my lowest gear, and toughed it out. This turned out to be the only snag. The rest of the ride was hilly but doable on less traveled country roads.

The end of the ride today was a stealth camp near Ballston Spa NY near Saratoga Springs. Despite a noontime start, I was able to get about 70 miles in so was pretty happy with that. Thank you paved bicycle path.