Saturday, July 12, 2008
Hot humid days are awful for running... it's just too darn easy to overheat. But they can be great for riding, as long as you're not looking to climb a lot of long hills... so after lunch today I headed over to Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site to do some riding on the Canalway trail in Montgomery County.
I started out by going to the boat launch on the Mohawk River, but discovered I didn't have change for the self-service fee station, so I headed down into the tiny hamlet of Fort Hunter to park at the museum there. What I didn't realize before getting here was that Fort Hunter was in the midst of their annual Canalfest! So I drove around town for a bit and finally decided to park at the free Canalfest parking (and hope I could get out when I got back at the end of my ride...)
Geared up, then walked across the road to snap some pictures of the remnants of the old aqueduct across the Schoharie Creek. Then I headed down the paved Canalway trail toward Amsterdam. Detoured to the old Yankee Hill Lock, which includes a restored replica of the Putnam General Store, a canal store from the late 1800's. There's a great deal of Erie Canal history in the Fort Hunter area, because all three allignments of the Canal (the Original, the Enlarged, and the current Barge Canal) are in fairly close proximity there. On the way I passed a goat farm - their plan for beating the heat seemed to involve doing as little as possible, though some were munching away at the plants around them.
After taking some photos of the old lock and the store, I continued along the Canalway trail toward Amsterdam. In addition to the path being paved, this section is also fairly wooded and shady - a very pleasant start to a long ride on a hot day! The path is also a ways from nearby roads, so it's fairly peaceful.
Eventually, I reached the outskirts of Amsterdam, and even though the path continues for a couple more miles I elected to turn back since the surroundings get a bit industrial - not really what I was looking for today. So I retraced my ride back to Fort Hunter and then headed west on the path. On of the unusual features of the Canalway trail just west of Fort Hunter is the bridge across the Schoharie Creek - it's an old railroad bridge that is fully decked and paved for two lane traffic, complete with a double yellow line down the middle. This dates back to the disastrous Thruway bridge collapse on April 5, 1987. Record flooding in the Schoharie Creek undermined the bridge and caused several spans to fall into the creek, resulting in 10 deaths. While the bridge was being repaired, Thruway traffic was diverted down to the bridge over 5S, and the old railroad bridge was redecked and paved for use by local traffic along 5S. Once the Thruway bridge was re-opened seven months later, local traffic was moved back to the 5S bridge, and the redecked railroad bridge was later put into service as part of the Canalway trail (thanks to The Upstate NY Roads Site and roadgeek.org for clearing this up for me.)
Just beyond the bridge is a narrow road down to the Schoharie Creek Boat Launch, which offers a few decent views of the remains of the aqueduct, so I pedalled down to the creek and spent a few minutes snapping photos before heading west along the Canalway trail.
(As an aside, I've always thought dragonflies and damselflies were pretty neat... and since I found out that one of the things they eat is mosquitoes, I like them even more!)
With the exception of a short stretch in Fultonville, the trail is surfaced with packed stone dust from Fort Hunter to just outside of Canajoharie. That makes the riding a little more strenuous, but nothing too bad when the trail is dry like it is today. The greater disadvantages to this stretch of trail are two-fold - much of it runs near the Thruway, so there's almost constant traffic noise. It's also routed along an old railbed (which in turn follows the old canal towpath in many areas) so it's fairly flat and fairly straight... in other words, it can be very boring! So much so that in the later stages of my ride, I started determining the BPM (bunnies-per-mile) rate... the most I counted was 9 in a one mile stretch, but there may have been a few stretches before I started counting that had more than that. Much of the time, though, I used the less-than-exciting nature of the path as motivation to just put my head down and crank out the miles.
I stopped about 11 miles west of Fort Hunter in the tiny hamlet of Randall. Took a brief break at a trail kiosk and then headed back eat, with a quick detour to check out something I'd heard of but never actually seen for myself. Lock 13 sits on the River/Canal just north of the Thruway, which means there's only limited land access to it... but a short road on the southern side of the Thruway leads to a parking area and a tunnel under the highway! I didn't feel any particular need to go through the tunnel (maybe if I hadn't had my bike...) but I did confirm that it does indeed exist.
After that there was nothing else to do but crank out 11 fairly dull miles, counting bunnies and occasionally checking out bits of scenery and the approaching sunset. Had some nice views of the half moon fairly high in the sky, too. In the end, I made decent time back to Fort Hunter, where I discovered that not only wasn't I blocked into the canalfest parking... my car was the only one left in the field! Guess everything for the evening was concentrated by the local fire station a half a mile or so away.
I'm pleased with how this ride went... it feels good to start doing some longer distances again, even if the path itself wasn't the most exciting one I've ridden, and it was good to revisit some places I haven't been in a while. I also learned a lot more about the 1987 Thruway bridge collapse - no doubt just more useless info cluttering up my grey matter, but I still found it interesting (especially since Ann makes a comment about it virtually every time we drive across the current bridge...)
JMH
