34.1 mi / 9.9 mph / 2489 ft. climbing
Home: Oquaga Creek State Park

We woke at 7am for a much-earlier start than yesterday. It was a perfect night of camping: everything (including the inside of the rainfly) stayed dry, it was comfortably-cool, there was a minimal amount of bugs, and we still had the forest essentially to ourselves.

One downside of riding through such an unpopulated area is that we can go for more than a day without passing a proper grocery store. Oxford has a classic town square, hosts some restaurants and bars, but the Dollar General is the only place to buy food. Unusually for a dollar store, it had taken over the building of what clearly used to be an independent grocery store, but the town must have no longer been able to support the conventional-grocery overhead. We acquired pure dollar-store garbage (Hostess donuts and drinks) to snack on for 2nd-breakfast by the fountain in the center of the town square, but also used it to remind us what food options dollar stores carry. Because the town of Bainbridge later on would also only have a dollar store (where we acquired perhaps the only vegetables along the 34 miles of our route, broccoli florets frozen inside a P.F. Chang’s beef-and-broccoli dinner kit).

On the east side of the river, we were surprised by the leafy neighborhood that felt like a train-commuter suburb of a rich city. Not that there was anything bad about the west side of Oxford, but the east side indicated that the town had quite a bit of money 150 years ago, and still has plenty to keep the houses in good shape. Which makes it crazy that they’re all worth less than $200k. Like, if they were rotting away, or the town was overwhelmed by drugs and crime, maybe the prices would make sense, but it really seems like a perfectly-nice place to live. Especially nice were the plots whose yards backed up onto a steep ridge (that we were beginning to climb); large green lawns gradating to forest climbing the wall.

Guilford was much-smaller than Oxford, but it had a gas station, so that’s where we stopped for lunch, setting up our chairs under some shade trees at the edge of the asphalt. We had a nice chat there with a couple country boys on motorcycles, a rare case these days when motorcyclists didn’t see us as their cultural enemies.

Even though we’ve been going up and down hills since leaving Skaneateles, it really felt like we were getting into a different, more-visible type of “hills” today, with evidence provided by the swift-flowing creeks that we crossed at the bottom of every valley. After Bainbridge, we had an 800-foot climb up to the State Park, and while it was generally a gradual climb, it still managed to throw in a patch of 12% grade for “fun”.

Oquaga State Park was completely different from the forested Bowman, but beautiful in its own way (and probably more unique). Here the sites were open, with carpets of grass, though still huge, and with plenty of trees around, including ones bursting with apples. Again though I was surprised by the single shower stall in each of the men’s and women’s bathhouses. It was still no problem at all, even though the campground was much fuller (there were probably about 5 other parties camping, whoa!), but I guess my mind just got used to New Zealand, where there must be a higher demand for campground showers? Also like Bowman, they were hot-water-only showers, which might have been a problem if it had been blazing hot outside. But hey, we should just be thankful they have showers at all, and hot is probably better than cold if there is going to be no temperature adjustment!

A few sites down there was a walker pushing a giant cart. He popped up a huge tent, and then was cooking with some serious kitchenware, so I guess that at least explained why his cart was so giant. I joked with Rett that we should tell him about using a bike to carry all your stuff (especially through these hills), but then when I talked with him it turns out he already knew about that possibility, having pedaled across New York on the Erie Canal Trail previously. And then he’d kayaked the trail as well. So what I had at first assumed was sort of a crazy guy turned out to be a relatively-normal “adventurer” like us. I wonder how many people are as prejudiced towards us, thinking that if we’re cracked in the head enough to be riding bicycles like ours, we’re probably bad people to have a conversation with too? Although, this guy’s “plan” was to walk across the US, and he only seemed mildly concerned about making it over the Rocky Mountains before they got snowed in, so he might be a bit crazier than us…

Rett again was frustrated that the effort of climbing 2500 feet for the third day in a row left her without the energy to explore more of the park. This one was a little better than Bowman, with a lot of mowed paths cut through the fields and woods to explore, but still not something where we’d ever talk to someone who would say “oh my god, did you walk through Oquaga State Park?! Wasn’t it amazing?!?” So relaxing with dessert was still the winning choice. It was again an absolutely perfect late-summer evening, so the only wrong choice would have been to not be spending it outside at all.