Buffalo, NY – A tent city that would be home to 600 or so bike riders as we made our way along the Erie Canal, from Buffalo to Albany NY over eight days. Each night it would be set up in a new town, and we would ride to it on the towpath along the canal, where mules once pulled barges from the Great Lakes to the Hudson River opening up trade for our growing nation in the 1800′s.
The canal features a series of locks that lift and lower boats to get around rapids.
In Lockport, we went through two of them.
Most of the trip? Riding. Discovering. Like a Peppermint museum in Lyons New York.
And the people. Several youngsters, some as young as eight, rode the entire 400 miles.
We saw a 96-foot waterfall in downtown Rochester called the High Falls. And the impressive Cohoes Falls closer to Albany.
The ride -a moving lesson in history - anecdotes about the people and towns that developed along the Erie Canal- in 2024 199 years old -and serious lessons about the way it changed America. Moving goods and information at four times the speed of horse and carriage.
Though the riding is flat, and people do it on all kinds of bicycles, it’s not always a piece of cake in the often-unbearable summer sun. Made easier at rest stops by ride veteran Jim Robinson. (bite) the Watermelon man who slices up 25-30 melons a day for the riders.
Then in Syracuse, a tornado warning. News reports said there was relatively minor local damage, but it never found our tent city.
We woke up every morning at about 5:15 -- one morning in heavy fog, that would eventually burn off for a beautiful day.
The ride is an economic boost to the many small towns along the canal which increasingly depend upon tourism.
So nearly every community welcomes us with food, water and a smile.
Then in the middle of seemingly nowhere – a beautiful garden carved out beside the trail. A family tribute to Bryan Place a stand-out runner and cyclist who died unexpectedly from an aneurysm.
Though most of the trail which is part dirt and part paved, follows the canal, there are still gaps, where cyclists ride mostly back roads – Though we did deviate into places like downtown Syracuse and Rochester.
Along one country road, an Amish family offered riders ice cream.
There is an effort to connect sections of the Erie Canalway Trail – part of New York’s Empire Trail network. It’s about 85 percent complete.
“It really is at its core a connector. It connects people to the outdoors. It connects communities to one another. It just connects our whole state. It’s a history, a story that only we have here in upstate New York. And people will come from around the world. We’ve got 37 states, and four countries represented on the bike tour this year,” said Dylan Carey, Director of Policy and Planning for Parks & Trails New York, a non-profit that works to improve the state’s trail and park infrastructure. It also organizes the ride we are doing.
Whether it was music, antique engines, a car show, boats along the canal – or just the scenery of upstate New York. The Erie Canalway Trail is both inspiring and exhausting. A solid week of cycling with new revelations every mile – and a sense of accomplishment at the end.