Erie Canalway – Day 10 – Amsterdam to Albany

We were thinking we would have breakfast at the restaurant in the Knights’ Inn in Amsterdam, since we couldn’t find anything else on our side of the river, and we didn’t want to take the time to ride across the river and then back, to continue on to Albany, but when we went downstairs to ask the desk clerk for ice, he told us about a restaurant, 12 miles along the trail towards Albany, called the Hungry Chicken Country Store, so we decided to leave without breakfast and stop there. Over the last few days as we searched for places to eat, we observed that restaurants were shown on Google Maps with an orange pin, with either a knife and fork, cocktail glass, or coffee cup on them, so last night we were just looking for orange pins. This one had a blue pin because it was a store, that just happened to serve food, I guess.

I must’ve gotten water where I shouldn’t have, when I was washing my bike last night, because my bar brakes weren’t working, although my brakes on the hoods were. This was fortunate that at least one set was working,because we had a steep descent down the hill from the hotel. By the end of the day, my bar breaks were working a bit better.

We had pavement the entire way today, but the first 3.5 km were almost intolerable. The quality was so poor that we were about to go out onto the nearby road when it improved.

It was incredibly hot and humid all day – possibly not the hottest day we’ve had, but somehow it felt that way, perhaps because we rode 214 km in the last two days, and today is 79. They were quite a few sections with trees on both sides, with some areas completely shaded, but other sections out in the sun, with views that showed we were riding through the rust belt. We kept ourselves cool by wetting our jerseys, whenever we had access to water, or just dribbling water from our water bottles on our jerseys as we rode, and wet our hair, as well. We had to stop and refill our bottles several times, including when we were just 11 km from the hotel, because we were almost out of water. I discovered last night when I went to bed that, it had been so hot in my pannier yesterday that my night guard had deformed!

This section of the Erie Canalway had the most amenities in terms of picnic tables, benches, and wayfinding signs of any day on our trip.

We were never rained on, but there were often threatening clouds.

The breakfast recommendation was an excellent one. Because we hadn’t identified anywhere else to purchase food before Albany, we also bought food to take with us. It was also one of the less expensive places we stopped. There was nowhere inside to eat, but they had picnic tables outside.

We passed a couple dams along the way.

In Schenectady, I saw a mini Statue of Liberty. This is the second one I’ve seen. I was going too fast to catch a picture of the first one and can no longer recall where it was.

Schenectady has a lot of beautiful old homes, including this one which was built in 1725 which is probably the oldest home in the city.

Here are a couple of others in the same neighbourhood.

A little further on there were a lot of wooden homes, some in better shape than others.

Just east of Schenectady was a casino. They had private balconies overlooking the path and the river with slot machines on them. There was a nice little neighbourhood just past the casino.

When we were eating breakfast this morning, a couple warned us that there were some hills on our route, including one particularly bad one that they predicted we would not be able to ride up. They were correct. All four of us walked – although Dayle got back on her bike, and rode up the last section. There was a covered seating area where we were able to rest, out of the sun, for a few minutes before continuing.

Despite the fact that we saw a few more tables and benches today, there were still long stretches with nowhere to sit, so we stopped in a shaded area to eat some of what we brought from the breakfast restaurant this morning, standing over or leaning on our bikes.

There were several of these tunnels under roads. They reminded me of the P’Tit Train du Nord in Quebec, which had quite a few spots like this.

We can always tell when we’re approaching a larger city because we start going under highways.

We saw several large trees down, but this was the biggest of them all.

This building belongs to SUNY now, but was originally a railroad road company building.

There are a lot of beautiful old buildings in Albany, which is the New York State capital.

Dave and I paused briefly about 1.5km from the hotel, and I said, I’m not sure exactly where the trail ends – because of course we want to get a picture there. I thought I spotted a sign, but didn’t stop in time, and we were too tired to figure it out, so continued to the hotel. I looked it up in the lobby. Apparently, it ended very near where we were standing when I posed the question, so we’ll have to go back there tomorrow while we are doing our sightseeing.

We weren’t in the hotel long before the skies opened up and it absolutely poured, but it didn’t last too long, and the sun came back out, along with the heat and the humidity.

I enjoyed eating my breakfast sandwich in bed and not on the road.

There are interesting looking parking lots prominently visible from the front and the back of our hotel.

Apparently there isn’t a lot open here on a Sunday, but the desk clerk suggested we go to McGarry‘s Irish pub. We spent a relaxing three hours there having a few drinks, congratulating ourselves on finishing the 580 km of Erie Canalway, and we lingered long enough to get dinner before heading back to the room for an early night.

Next-door to the pub was a store called Nocturnal Cookies Cafe, but they weren’t open. We vowed to return tomorrow.

Cindy and I scoured websites to find things that would be of interest to us on a walking tour tomorrow and created a route.

Then I chose my pictures, dictated the blog, and headed to bed.