37.0 mi / 12.0 mph / 890 ft. climbing
Home: Indian Island County Park Bike Hostel

A couple weeks ago we celebrated the anniversary of our nomadacy (our third), and today comes our wedding anniversary (our sixth)! That means we have been nomads for four of our six anniversaries, but this is only the second when we’ve spent the day in motion. And as good as that day in Oregon forests was, this one was easily better, at least in terms of allowing more-traditional forms of celebration along the more-populated route.

We began the day again on the lightly-traveled forest roads, with the perfect weather continuing. A guy on a road bike passed us at one point, then we passed him as he stopped to talk with some mountain-biker friends, and when he caught us a second time we chatted as we rode. He took off again, but the third time was the charm as he suddenly circled back, phone-in-hand, and conducted a live-stream interview with us as we all rode together. That was a fun first for us! (unfortunately I don’t know how to find the video…)

We crossed a bridge onto the almost-an-island of North Haven, and then coming down Ferry Road, saw the ferry for which the road is named sitting at the dock with cars on board but its gate open. Yes, our timing was perfect, and we pedaled directly on-board as they closed the gate behind us!Part of why we’ve been visiting all these islands over the last month is because bikes and ferries tend to work well together, but we’ve never had one work that smoothly! I’m sure in the retelling the ferry will have just started to pull away, and we’ll be launching our loaded bikes over the gap Knight Rider-style. “$4 each, with the bikes. So…$8”, said the math-genius of a ferryman as I removed my helmet and got out cash. The journey to Shelter Island takes only a few minutes, so we just stood with the bikes.

We took a slightly-longer-than-necessary 5-mile route from Shelter Island’s South Ferry to its North Ferry, to see a bit more of this morsel of food that floats uneaten in the open jaws of Long Island’s east end. For an island that requires the ferries to access, it felt surprisingly normal, with the large-lot suburban houses not feeling much different than many parts of New England. I’m sure there is quite a local history to be told about the political battles over whether or not to build a bridge (or two), whose absence does not appear to be due to engineering limitations.

It was only at the North Ferry that we came to the “town” on the island, would have been cute enough to stop at if we didn’t have other items on the docket today (some houses had their architecture plucked straight from Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard). Our timing for the second ferry wasn’t quite as good, but that just gave us a chance to chat with a friendly group of four Westchester weekenders exploring the area by bike.

Now on the northern jaw of Long Island, we found that Greenport was a cute as our new cyclist friends reported. A tea shop provided Rett an opportunity to restock her Lapsang Souchong before we hit the IGA for groceries. A big reason we crossed over to the north fork (besides an excuse to take more ferries!) is that Rett had heard about its vineyards. A guy a few days ago recommended this route for its relative chillness vs. the south, without knowing that’s exactly what I’d already planned, and we’re glad for that aspect too!

As we rode westward, the map showed the winery Rett had selected for us less than half a mile way, which seemed unlikely since I hadn’t yet seen a single grape vine to indicate that we had actually reached the grape-growing soils. As I jokingly questioned the quality of her research, we in fact turned into the very first vineyard that appeared. She had of course made a choice perfectly my speed: The Old Field Vineyard is a small-time family-run operation that doesn’t even have a building on-site. Just a wooden shed from which they pour their wine (selling bottles for as low as $23!), porta-potties around back, a ramshackle treehouse in the yard of the roped-off residence, and a hodgepodge of chairs and tables scattered around the lawn. The true key to my heart was that we could BYOF, so we broke out all our collected charcuterie elements and assembled a perfect anniversary lunch on a perfect early-fall day.

It was difficult to leave that autumn paradise, and as we moved on, the dozens of subsequent wineries only increased my esteem for the one we had left (and my esteem for my wife who had chosen it over all these others!) They were all much more elaborate operations, with large tasting rooms, crowds filling them, and expensive cars jamming into their parking lots. No thank you! (We did eventually stop at another one shortly before our campground just to buy a chilled bottle for dinner, and the surly staff and wait-for-table confirmed that it was valid to judge these books by their covers).

For the next 15 miles, we were riding with nearly non-stop traffic. My first thought was that it was weekenders draining out of island and returning west to the City, but there was plenty of it going east too. Maybe people not quite ready to go home? It was an ideal fall destination; interleaved with the wineries were pumpkin patches, flower stands, and farm stands advertising the full range of just-harvested vegetables. Luckily there was a good shoulder the whole way, so while the noise diminished the peace a bit, the riding was still comfortable.

Our destination was our third Suffolk County Park in a row. We came into the back entrance of Indian Island (off Hubbard Rd.), slipping our bikes through a gap in the loosely-chained gates, found the bike hostel area (which appeared before the main campground), and set up without even talking with anyone. It was nearly half a mile to the showers, and there was a large group having a party in the nearby day-use area, with their music reverberating (and later mashed-up discordantly, though occasionally harmoniously, with the ice-cream truck’s music). But even with all that, having our very own secluded large area was worth far more than the $0 we were paying for it.

For dinner with our Riesling we had leftover Thai-style scallops that we had cooked on Block Island and had carried unrefrigerated for the last three days. But I recall the famous quote from Einstein, or was it Ben Franklin, or maybe Homer Simpson: “nothing ages like a fine wine except for 60-degree seafood, and 6-year-old marriages.” Damn straight, Homer!