The rain tapered off overnight; the morning was cloudy without much threat of showers. Everything I owned was wet. The tent had done a good job keeping water out (glad I’d decided to bring along the footprint, which I’d debated), but pretty much all my clothes, bags, and towels were on the spectrum from damp to soaked. And most was also dirty. After camp breakfast, it was time to hit the showers, try to get my stuff as clean as possible, and set some stuff up to dry more on the road.
As a bike tourist I don’t carry a lot of stuff, but when it’s all dirty, washing it by hand takes quite a while. You wouldn’t think that three pairs of bike socks, three quick-dry tees, three bike undershorts and two shells would be that much, especially since you wear one set. But you’d be surprised. Between cleaning that stuff up, and also trying to clean my towels and tent and equipment, it took me probably three hours to get out of camp in the morning.
Because I had chosen to camp two nights at Keuka Lake, today’s day would be the longest on the trip. The route I’d sketched out came to 105km, but the last few days had shown me to check the terrain before I finalized the plan for the day. A couple of the straight-line roads looked like they went straight up steep ridges; I’d probably be better off doing some more distance and skirting some of the drumlins.
The first climb was unavoidable; heading due west from Keuka Lake, the day started out with a 300-meter ascent, max grade 8%.
The trees continued to show a bit more color each day.
After getting over Italy Hill, a lovely descent brought me into the town of Naples, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of hundreds of cars. Turns out I’d run into the Naples Grape Festival.
Part of what I love about bike touring is running across unexpected things. I had grape donuts (nice) and grape pie (really nice!), and wandered around a bit listening to live music and families having fun.
The problem with having such a long day is that there’s not enough time to enjoy these kinds of chance encounters; I still had a long way to go, so I had to get back on the road.
Now that I’d be coming out of another lake valley, I again checked my planned route on the topo map, and the direct route over Naples Mountain looked pretty bad; 500 meters of climbing, partially on dirt, with grades up to 9%. I made the call to follow the valley around the mountain, which saved 200 meters of climbing, at the cost of another 10km of riding. Seemed like a good tradeoff.
Out here you could really see the drumlin forms. The hills are the deposits left behind by the retreat of the last glacial ice sheet.
Because I’d chosen the route around the mountain, I was on a busier road, but when I got to Wayland I was able to take a side road that turned out to be outstanding bike touring; gently rolling hills through autumnal trees, with no traffic.
That rolled all the way to Canadice Lake Trail, the best lakeside riding of the trip on a small rough doubletrack.
There was a short, stupid climb out of the Canadice Lake valley up to Hemlock Lake Park, where I was able to get some water and a bit of phone charging.
From Hemlock there was another short, stupid climb getting over the ridge to Conesus Lake; at the bottom of the descent I briefly touched the route Nancy and I had ridden together at the south end of the lake. At one point I could see Rochester in the distance (bye, John!)
By now I could anticipate how the ride out of Conesus Lake would go; the ride plan went straight up a 13% grade. In this case it looked like there was a good route around, on busier roads, and about 8km longer, but with almost no climb. I made good time and probably was just as quick as going over the hill would have been.
When I got to the other side, I was racing daylight, so wasn’t stopping for route checks. I missed the reconnection to my planned route, so wound up on the state highway instead of a parallel greenway, but given the timing I was fine with that. There was very little traffic at this point in the day.
I was hoping to get to Mount Morris, the last town before Letchworth State Park, and find a beer and a burger before I headed into camp. Making camp food in the dark is kind of grim. As I approached the town, I crossed Interstate 390, which was the first real traffic I had seen since Rochester. The road after 390 was unpleasant with traffic, and as I neared town I felt the first drizzle of the day. I was very happy to land at the High Banks Tavern just before they shut down the kitchen.
Mount Morris is just outside the park boundary. Letchworth is quite large, and the campground was still 13km from town. It was fully dark by the time I finished dinner, so I wound up riding the largely empty park road in the dark. On the road my headlight caught a red fox, a bobcat, and some raccoons.
Arriving at the campground I found that I had failed to reserve a spot. The official park policy is no drop-in camping, but there was no one there to enforce it, so I rolled in and chose the first empty site. Just two more riding days ahead, which meant that I didn’t have to do laundry!
The drizzle had blown over by the time I got to the park; I set up the tent without the rain fly again and had a pleasant breeze through the night.
