Last day of the trip. At the start the temperature is a cool 60 degrees and the weather forecast calls for zero percent chance of rain, wonderful conditions for a ride.
In various places we followed the obsoleted canals with their hand carved stone block locks, now abandoned. In other locations we followed the current canal on the Mohawk River. It's much broader that the canal that we've been following the past couple of days often with wide dams that allowed for locks to be built along side of the dam. I expect in a manner that you may have heard of "fish ladders" that are built near dams that allow fish to bypass dams on their way up stream to spawn.
Our coffee stop was in Schenectady about 18 miles into the start at a coffee shop called "Arthur's Market", a building that is over 225 years old and is located in the Stockade Historic District. I highly recommend the breakfast sandwich.
The bike trails are the best ones so far. Well marked and in many places fairly new asphalt surface. Just a please to ride through the shady tree lined trails. It was rare when we weren't on a dedicated bike trail and on roadways. In addition, since it was a Sunday, there were few cars on the road.
We had a picnic lunch in Colonie Town Park over looking the Mohawk River where we tired to finish up the trip's leftovers.
The mileage for the day was slightly less than 50 miles and we arrived in Albany early afternoon and started preparations for making our travel preparations. For me, my brother Ed was driving from New Jersey to pick me up and bring me back to Fayson Lakes NJ. Chris was heading the airport hotel for a flight back to California. Mike and Colleen were catching a train back to Buffalo where their car was waiting for them. Keith and Melinda were staying overnight with plans on touring upper New York state before heading back to the Midwest.
It has been a wonderful experience traveling the roads with friends. None of them I would have know if I had not taken up biking.
During the trip, I have revived many questions regarding bike tours. If this trip blog has raised questions, please send them to me at; brian@coxintl.com and I'll try to answer them.
Happy Biking,
Brian Cox
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