Weeks 3-4

Our previous visit to Skaneateles was for only 8 days, so we had decided that it wouldn’t be worth lugging the bikes back and forth with us from Chicago on Amtrak (though we somewhat regretted that choice). On our two visits before that, we had just completed an intensive phase of bike riding, so while we made sure to do our beloved loop around Skaneateles Lake, we didn’t do much riding beyond that. So this time, with nearly two months gone by since our last loaded “bike touring”, we made sure to get a lot more riding in.

Because it’s an absolutely world-class place to ride, at least if you don’t mind hills. And since we did all of these day-rides unloaded (and since our muscles still have memory of New Zealand and Hawaii), the hills were less of a concern for us. Over the years we have explored many of the country roads that depart from and return to Skaneateles, but I surprised myself by finding a host of unexplored ones during this visit. In addition to our fifth circumnavigation of Skaneateles Lake, we also did loops of Owasco Lake, one Finger to the west, and Otisco Lake, one Finger to the east. But now the “uncharted territory” is getting close to zero!

It’s the seventh time we’ve circled Skaneateles Lake over the last ten years, and while our 11.68mph average speed was significantly faster than our 9mph speed in 2014 when Rett had only been cycling for a year (and almost beat last year’s record of 11.73mph), it’s still a challenging ride, with 2700 feet of climbing in its 43 miles. For the first time since that 2014 loop, we arrived to the isolated Glen Haven restaurant at the south end of the lake when it was open, so had a nice 10-year-anniversary lunch there.

We’ve kissed the shore of Otisco Lake on previous visits, but never come close to riding around it, so we were both a little embarrassed to independently decide that it might be a more-beautiful lake than Rett’s much-larger “home lake”! Well, not necessarily the lake itself, but its setting, especially the south end in its U-shaped glacial valley, made it a ride we’ll make sure to do again sometime.

Just like Skaneateles, it’s a big steep climb up the wall of Otisco’s U-shaped valley when coming up from the south end of the lake, and we took a bit of a chance heading a couple miles up “dead end” West Valley Road to climb out on a road that showed up on Google and had some Strava activity, but no StreetView. The road sign didn’t lie; at its base at the boat launch, the road up the hill was blocked by a solid barrier, but it was easy to walk the bikes around it through a gap in the brush, so we decided to go for it. But with the 14-15% grade and branch-covered abandoned-road surface, Rett walked the whole way up anyway, while I rode in bursts. Then at the top my fear came true, and the barrier at the far end was much more-impassible. We were trapped! Well, no, we’re on bikes, not in a car, so we were able to climb the 6-foot barrier and then hoist our bikes over the top. Since we had barely any bags, it made it easier that if we’d been fully loaded, but even that wouldn’t have stopped us. And it felt good to refresh our ability to get through “closed” roads on the bikes!

Our non-bike highlight of the fortnight was an overnight camping trip to Watkins Glen State Park. Ken let us borrow his van for this one, because otherwise it would have been a two-day bike ride each way to yet another south-end-of-a-Finger-Lake, this time Seneca, the giant one three fingers west of Skaneateles. Not even Rett, the Finger Lakes native, had been to this park, and while it’s another “gorge with waterfalls flowing to a lake” as almost all the Finger Lakes State Parks are, Watkins Glen is the most-spectacular by far. The gorge is tall and extremely-narrow in points (so narrow that the path often goes through tunnels, has multiple waterfalls, and mixes Civilian Conservation Corps-stonework in that matches or even exceeds the natural beauty.

On the way to the park, we stopped at two excellent farmhouse breweries near the north end of Seneca Lake (Fleur De Lis Brew Works and Brewery Ardennes), and on the way home stopped at one more (Wagner Valley Brewing Co.). Wineries and breweries line the entirety of the lake, more-continuously than any of the Finger Lakes we’ve visited.

We’ve frequently discussed settling in the area; it’s gorgeous, real-estate is a steal (you can get an updated 1850s mansion for $300k in the more out-of-the-way towns), and of course there is the family connection. So a month of all of these wonderful bike rides and distracting destinations had Rett saying “see, we could spend years going for Tuesday bike rides on new roads to a new brewery!” Yeah, that wouldn’t be a bad life either, but not just yet…