Bicycling New England, the
Erie Canal, & around Lake Ontario 2005
Rochester to Medina, NY

July 11, 2005
Distance 45.3 Miles

This morning we woke up and walked to the motel lobby for Belgian waffles, we then loaded up the bicycle and made sure we had lots of cold water, as it is already warm out. We left the motel and crossed the street in front of the airport it was a 4 lane road with lots of exits and entrances from the 4 lane road below. But the travel gods were with us and there weren't more then 10 cars on the road. And less then a mile later we turned onto the paved bicycle path out of Rochester. About three miles later we came to a cross street, with a sign stating that the bicycle path was closed for construction. After some debate we decided not to take a chance and just follow the road around the construction. This probably added about 2 miles to our trip. Before Spencerport we got back on the bike path, only now the path was mostly limestone. Not hard to bike on, but the constant noise does get to you after a while. We enjoyed watching the boats on the canal.

Did we have a big surprise? Here it is Monday, when everyone should be at work, and we have 400 bicyclists that are traveling the Erie Canal from Buffalo to Albany. They are going in the opposite direction then we were but we did have to pass every one of them. Most of the time it was not a problem, but we did have a couple that thought both sides of the path belonged to them. By the time we reached Brockport we had passed most of them.

We crossed the canal in Albion and found a subway shop for lunch. We shared a 6" sub and decided that we would ride another 10 miles before stopping for the day, but we did not want to go back to the bicycle path. We rode through town until we came to highway 31 and we headed west. We reached downtown Medina and found a good restaurant that served one scoop of ice cream for $.75. Picture below is Mary Kay preparing for ice cream, our dessert for lunch ten miles ago

We stopped at the library and a train museum, but the museum was closed on Monday and the library did not sell old paperback books. So we headed out to our motel for tonight.

There was no one working at the motel when we arrived. We called the manager, who is in another town, and he told us that room 6 was unlocked and that someone would be out in a couple hours to check us in. In the meantime we were able to shower, wash out our clothes and accomplish other daily chores.

There are two restaurants within a block so supper will not be a problem.