Day 10 and 11 of the Empire State Trail: Beyond the Empire

As we have finished with the Empire State Trail, it's not correct to continue to call it that, is it? Well, the next part of our journey was to take us from Buffalo, the end of the Erie Canal and the end of the Trail, home to Lakewood, Ohio. This part of the trip would by necessity be on roads, not trails, so I can't really call it a trail anymore. Just the road home. We began our road home on Sunday. Staying at the luxurious condo in the sky in Buffalo, a far cry from the night before (or as you'll see, the night after...), the day began with rain. We've actually been really luck with weather this trip, in that we've had nothing but sunshine and some heat. Today that changed, but since we had no check-out time, we stayed until we saw that the rain had stopped. This put us behind about 2 hours, leaving about 9:30 in the morning, not our usual 7-8AM. We had about 74 miles to ride today, so time was a'wastin'. We wound our way through downtown Buffalo, found our way to the end of the Empire Trail, and to make it official, took photos at the other end as we had the beginning.

We then switched our maps and electronic GPS to the routes found in the Adventure Cycling Association's "Northern Tier." This entire map system covers a cycling adventure from Anacortes, WA to Bar Harbor, ME. We are only interested in the section of the trip that takes us from Buffalo to Lakewood. Adventure Cycling, for those who have followed, maps out the bike friendliest ways to get across the country, as we did in 2020 with the "Trans-America Trail, from Oregon to Virginia. In order to connect with the Northern Tier route, we set off for Hamburg, NY, south of Buffalo. This was a trek through some heavily trafficked roads, but eventually we found it. Off we rolled, westward to Lake Erie, which we would follow for the most part all the way to LAKEwood. I live less than a mile from Lake Erie, so how hard could it be to just follow the lake? We'll see. We rolled along, stopping for lunch at The Shorehouse Bar and Grill along the route. We had brunch at this fine establishment, filled our waterbottles, and seeing we had only made it about 20 miles by lunch, due to our late start, bemoaned our long afternoon ahead. We rolled along, from the near-Buffalo lakefront, filled with gated mansions on the banks, to lakefront rental properties where many would go for their trips to the shore, we found the lakefront to be pretty agreeable. I was surprised, to be honest, about how many hills we climbed and rolled over. More than I had imagined, and more than I usually drive on when going on the NY Thruway which cuts across farmland towards Buffalo. We rode and rode, past a town called Silver Creek, past Dunkirk, stopping at a Tim Horton's to grab a donut and a cold drink, just to keep us hydrated and donuted. We were hoping to get to our target for the night, Westfield, NY. Hitting Westfield would mean that we would end up with 3 days of about 75 miles each. Westfield was about 74 miles from our start in Buffalo, letting us make Ashtabula Ohio the next night, targeting home on Tuesday. We picked Westfield, but we didn't know what kind of housing we would find on the that end. The hotel choices were pretty sparse, so we looked at stopping at the KOA right along the route, close to Westfield. Just as we got withing a few miles of the KOA, it started raining again. Not terribly hard, but enough to get my rain jacket on, even though I kept it unzipped since it was pretty hot. I'm not sure what I accomplished, as I felt wet at sweaty at the same time. We pulled into the KOA, taking a look to see what the camping would be like. Did they have showers? water? Yes, they had both, but we were surrounded by RV's and trailers. We talked to the manager, who said that a space to park our tent would be $60. Sorry, but for a spot on the ground and a shower, that seemed a little steep. With unclear skies above, we thought about once again putting a roof over our heads at a local motel. We found one, not too far from the route, called the Thruway Holiday Motel. While it hit our check-boxes, indoor, shower, Wifi, locked door, I wouldn't be planning a holiday to this motel. We suspected, and were later confirmed, that some of the guests at the Holiday Motel were actually residents. Very sketchy characters that supposedly were dismissed from Section 8 housing elsewhere. We made sure we bolted our door and left nothing to chance. We showered, washed our smelly clothes, and headed out to dinner, this time to a place called the Quagliana's Bark Grill. This was in a relatively modest neighborhood after we had passed many abandoned buildings, but inside we found it delightful. We had a wonderful dinner of broiled fresh-caught Walleye and some cheesecake for dessert. We spoke to the proprietor, a woman on the local planning committee. She learned where we were staying and said that she was embarassed for her town that this was where we had to stay. Not many better options were available, but it was definitely pretty sketchy. No problem, it was a place for a night. The next day we set out as early as we could gather our things and get out the door. We had a target of Ashtabula, and I had actually, for the first time, reserved the room in advance, hoping that this option, about 81 miles away, would be motivation. As we got going, we realized that the rain the previous day had swept away almost all of the humidity, and some of the heat. And, more importantly, it changed the wind, which now was headed in the same direction we were. This, for a cyclist, is very good news. Not such good news awaited me a few miles down the road when I had my first flat tire. We have been pretty lucky through this trip, and this was the first breakdown. A new tube, pumped up tire, and I was rolling again, this time faster, since I think all morning I had been slowed by this mushy tire. Rolling along we did, and were making great time. We zoomed past Northeast PA on our way towards Erie. We stopped quickly at a Starbucks at a hotel in Erie, along the waterfront, grabbed a coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and rolled on. We were making good time, and when noon came around, we were already into Pennsylvania and rolling towards Ohio. We weren't actually hungry for lunch, but I thought if we could hit a Wendy's, I would grab a frosty and fries for a snack. Jerry said, "wouldn't an A&W root beer float sound good? We laughed, as we hadn't seen one of these in forever. But moments later, as we rolled into Conneaut, Ohio we came across the White Turkey Drive-In, which was heaven for Root Beer. It was amazing! It was gorgeous outside and we sat down at stools around a bar outside where they served us the biggest Root Beer floats I had ever seen, along with an order of fries. This place has been there since 1952, and it looked out of place in a world of chain joints. Thank goodness for this little wonder, and I hope it stays around for another 70 years.

We kept on rolling on, spurred by the tail wind, and before we knew it, we had traveled through Ohio and across the Ashtabula river and there was our hotel. But it was only 2:20PM! We looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. If we got here this early, 1) what were we going to do all afternoon on this glorious day? and 2) How much farther could we get? I cancelled our reservation, and we set off down the road to find out. We went into Geneva on the Lake, a touristy little place, and kept going. We didn't really plan this, but we were coming to the realization we could go a long way on this day. After all, it was cool weather and the wind was behind us. Who knows what tomorrow could bring? On we went, through Geneva, Madison, Perry, all places that I consider Cleveland's far east suburbs. Could we get all the way home? We didn't know, but we kept pushing. Eventually, as we approached Painesville, we were hungry and getting pretty worn out. We looked at the map and it still had us going another 40 miles to get home, and it was getting late. Could we beat the sun? Jerry was a bit worried we couldn't, so asked if we could get some back-up help in a rescue plan from friends or family. I called, but this was going to be difficult, as friends and family had things going on and we imposed an unusual request at the end of a day. We kept on going anyway, traveling through all of the eastern suburbs of Mentor, then Euclid, then Bratenahl, heading towards Cleveland. We finally ended up on the east shoreway, heading towards town. I was a lot more motivated than he was, as I had ridden these streets before, and he had no idea where we were. I kept saying we could make it, we could make it. We ended up losing to the sun, but we had hit downtown by sunset, turned on our headlights, and headed into Lakewood.

This turned out to be the longest road ride I can remember doing, at about 150 miles! This was basically doing two days' riding in one, and we were carrying a lot of weight on our bikes. But we made it, after stopping at Drug Mart for Gatorades and ice cream. Home again, a day early, tired, exhausted really, but home. We showered, sat down and watched a bit of baseball as the Guards are in Arizona, so the game was late.

What a day, what a week+ it's been. When making the decision to go forward and ride, we kept saying that we don't know what tomorrow will bring, so we might as well take advantage of the good day, sunshine, and tailwinds. Good thing we did that, as the next day, today, it rained multiple times, with hot humidity between the downpours. We would have had a much harder day, it turns out, than just putting our heads down and riding while the sun shone. Sometimes life is like that: do everything you can, while you can, because you don't know what tomorow brings. We did and it took us farther than ever, and we enjoyed just about all of it.