18.7 Mile Ride on Rt 5S & the Canalway Trail (Little Falls to Ilion)
11.7 Mile Ride on Rt 5 (Lock 19 to Ilion)
Saturday, September 15, 2018
I think one of the things that makes is harder to be excited about riding some of the remaining sections of the canalway trail is the fact that the stretches near Syracuse and Utica are mainly on-road, which means the scenery tends to be less interesting and I get to deal with car and truck traffic.
I planned today's trip specifically around riding between Little Falls and Utica. The day was originally going to start with a race on the short off-road section of trail between the German Flatts Historical Society and Mohawk, but after a fairly exhausting week I decided to sleep a little later rather than run a 5k (a distance which I have been running much more often, but which I still don't particularly enjoy given how slow I am and how long it takes me to warm up. I had actually planned to get there over an hour early today to run about 3 miles before the race so that I'd be close to warmed up during the event itself.)
I started the first ride today riding that section of off-road trail down into Mohawk before following the roads over to Ilion and crossing the river, where I turned back. Rode back to the car, refilled my water bottles anticipating little shade for the rest of the ride, and after walking the bike through the Living History Festival at the Historical Society (which looked to be a civil war encampment re-enactment combined with a small fall festival) followed the roads all the way over to the trailhead on Rte 167 where I had stopped a little over a year ago.
After grabbing some lunch I headed west to Lock 19. Some of the locks have really nice parks on their grounds... while this one had a very nice sign out by the road proclaiming it Schuyler's Lock 19, it was pretty clear it sees mainly boat traffic, and anyone travelling the canal by boat who wanted to stop for the night would likely put in at one of the marinas (like the Ilion Marina where I stopped to use the bathroom.)
From there it was a hot slog east along Rt 5 to where I'd stopped earlier, and then a similar slog back to Lock 19, with cars and trucks zooming by me at 55-60 mph. The trip back was a little easier than the trip out mainly because I had a tailwind. Earlier in the day I had wondered if I would have enough juice to finish this section today (it's about 6.5 miles from Lock 19 to the Canalway Trail parking lot in Utica) but it was very clear that I didn't have another 13 miles in my legs, so when I got back to the lock I called it a day. (There's a possibility I'll ride that last 13 miles next weekend, if I head out to Utica to the Falling Leaves road race on Sunday... I'm still undecided if I want to run that or stay closer to home.)
It looks like there's construction going on for a new section of trail between the German Flatts Historical Society and Lock 18 to the east, but it also looks like they still have a lot to do, and it doesn't seem like that can add more than 2-3 miles of offroad trail. There's a pretty obvious overgrown railbed on Rt 167 across from the current trailhead, but it's very unclear if they plan to run the trail through there. I know what I read most recently is that they're planning to do more modifications to the road-side route in that area to make it more bicycle and family friendly - apparently between bridges that would need to be built and land that would need to be purchased, on-road is simply a much more viable option.
JMH
