This past fall, my wife went on a camping trip to Brushwood in New York and took me along. I took that opportunity to ride the Chautauqua Trail. (Not very well developed for bike riding, by the way.) When I returned from my day of riding, she was talking about attending a week long camping event in July and I almost instantly decided that I would take that opportunity to ride the Erie Canalway, something I've been wanting to do for several years now.

So, here are the plans as they are developing:

Friday 10 July 2009: Happy Birthday to me. Leave Pittsburgh after work and drive up to Brushwood.

Saturday 11 July: Get up early and drive to Buffalo an hour and a half away. The mother of a friend lives on the canal in Tonawanda so I'll drive there, she'll drive me to the airport where I will rent a car for the 4 hour drive to Albany. I looked into taking the train but with boxing up the bike and the BoB trailer, I'm not sure that would work. The car will cost me $65 plus gas, so that's not too bad. I'll drop off the car at the Albany airport and ride my bike the 8 miles or so into town. I'll have some time for sightseeing, ultimately picking up the trailhead and riding about 12 miles to camp at the Boater/Biker/Hiker campsite at Lock #2 in Waterford.

Sunday 12 July: It will be a 65 mile ride to camp at Lock #15 in Fort Plain. This is also the day that an annual fully supported canalway ride sets out. I think they will be starting from Albany and taking 8 days to get to Buffalo. My plan will take 6 days so I'll be ahead of them the entire way. I thought for a moment about going on the supported ride but there were a lot of factors against that: The $520 price tag. Riding with lots of people. Having to take an extra few days off of work. Not being able to coordinate easily with my wife's plans.

Monday 13 July: My plan is to camp at Boater/Biker/Hiker camps along the way. Most are at locks and I imagine they are administered by the Army Corps of Engineers. I also expect that they won't cost me anything. The next such camp traveling west would be at Lock #20 near Utica but that is only 40 miles from Fort Plain. 40 miles is too short a ride for a day so I'll be riding on another 40 miles to Green Lakes State Park south of Syracuse.

Tuesday 14 July: Ride 77 miles to Macedon.

Wednesday 15 July: Skip another camp to total 63 miles to Middleport.

Thursday 16 July: Ride 40 Miles into Buffalo and then back another dozen miles to North Tonawanda. If necessary, I'll stay at Miller Park but I'll probably be able to stay at my friend's mother's place on the canal.

Friday 17 July: Ride the 15 miles to Niagara Falls. I was in Niagara for a family vacation 30 years ago and would like to see it again. I wonder how easy it will be to cross over into Canada on my bicycle. After that, it will be a ride back to Tonawanda to load up my car and head back. South of Buffalo, I've just found out about the Pedaling History Bicycle Museum. If I can schedule it, I'll want to stop there before returning to Brushwood.

Something I've noticed in building my itinerary: My estimates on the mileage are missing about 40 miles when compared to the chart in "Cycling the Erie Canal". The total from Albany to Buffalo should apparently be 379 miles and I've only got 340. It's tough to be accurate when there is not a detailed mileage map, apparently no mile markers and the mileage chart they do have does not have any entries of the location I am actually stopping at. So, I drew a map in Google Earth and did some estimates. I'm hoping that my inaccuracies are spread out over the whole distance and not disproportionately focused on one of my 80 mile days. I can ride 80 miles on towpath in a day without a problem and adding another dozen miles due to a math error won't break me but having an accurate mileage would allow me to plan better.

http://www.tasigh.org/gps/erie2009.html -- Revised: 16 November 2008 Copyright © 2008 Kevin A. Geiselman

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