I’m guessing that Sprague Brook is a sulphur spring, because the water at the park was cloudy and smelly. It was probably safe to drink, but I retain some trauma from drinking bad water late in a bike tour, so I used a minimal amount for breakfast and didn’t fill up my Camelbak.
The plan was for a relatively short day. Not having to do laundry made for a relaxed morning. After breaking camp, I decided to check out the park’s mountain biking trails. I’m pretty sure I rode here on unicycle when I met up with a friend from Rochester a few years back; it’s wooded, rooty singletrack. With the full touring rig it was a little spicy. I had to hop a guardrail at the far end to get back on route.
I planned a slight detour to go by my step-sister’s place, not far from the park. She’s setting up a property for people to camp/glamp; I spent a couple hours with her, checking out the property, chatting and getting coffee and cookies. From there I haded almost directly west towards Lake Erie. The ride was mostly flat or downhill from here, not so much of the rolling terrain I’d spent the last few days coming through. I’d drop 200 meters over the course of the day.
Approaching the waterfront I reentered suburban, and then urban landscapes. Traffic picked up and there were more stop lights; I’d seen very few of those since leaving Ithaca.
The maps showed a marked bike route along Lake Erie; I thought that would be a fitting end to the trip. I did get a view of Buffalo, but it turned out that this is the “bike route”:
The heavy traffic kept it from being fun until I was able to get off the main route in Lackawanna. (New Jersey flashback, the commuter train I took to school and NYC was called the Erie Lackawanna at the time). Lackawanna is a former company town for the now-shuttered Bethlehem Steel plant, and it still seems to be mostly working-class and low-income families.
The industrial outskirts of cities are often grim places; Buffalo’s is rougher than most. They’re trying to make a tourist attraction out of these abandoned plants; there’s a newly constructed bike path by one of the old grain silos.
The bike path continues along the waterfront by the Buffalo River, eventually dead-ending out there. During the summer there’s a water taxi ferrying bikes and peds across, but it wasn’t running and I had to double back.
There are still some active factories on the way into town, notably the General Mills plant, which smells a whole lot like Cheerios.
After that there was just finishing up with a loop around Niagara Square in front of City Hall, getting a good shower and a fresh set of clothes, and processing the end-of-tour emotional mix of accomplishment, regret and relief over a cheeseburger and beer at The Place.
