ride for africycle day seven (part one)

hamlin beach state park to shalamar campground, niagara falls, ontario 120 km (part one)

the original plan for today was to ride from hamlin beach state park to 4 mile creek state park.

that would plant us pretty close to the border crossing back into canada.

but a gathering of the riders led to us deciding to change our route and our plans ever so slightly allowing us to cross at the lewiston - queenston bridge. after crossing the bridge we would head for a private campground just outside niagara falls. the effect of this would be to save some distance on the following day and maybe even to shave off some distance on this day.

so we were up at 6 a.m. to try and beat the majpority of the heat.

we had an absolutely beautiful ride - mostly flat through countryside that wherever possible skirted the edge of lake ontario. of copurse it was still really hot and i found that i couldn't go for more than forty km without a stretch in the shade. on this day i went through twelve full bottles of water.

at one point we reached a corner where there were two trees entirely covered in sneakers. the picture isn't that great because i carry this camera in one of the back pockets of my bike shirt which gets ultra sweaty and so the camera sometimes gets fogged up.

i stopped to take a picture of this forlorn looking motorboat.

landlocked.

likely forever.

i also stopped to take a picture of this portion of a wall of a very old home serving as a museum (closed).

i love river pebbles that have been smoothed off and rounded by water action.

here the entire house was covered with them.

shortly after this picture we stopped at a bar called bandana's for cold cokes -

two dollars for a bottomless glass!

after that we rode into youngstown - an absolutely gorgeous town.

i said to bike buddy lisa - this town could have been the set for andy of mayberry - later we picked up a brochure about the town and it said the exact same thing. oh i'm so clever!!

we stopped in youngstown at a lovely coffee shop where i had an iced espresso.

iced espresso. chills you down and fires you up all at the same time. perfect!

from there we wound our way along a variety of roads and bike trails eventually ending up at the base of the niagara escarpment with a pretty steep climb up a fairly bike unfriendly road. however, we all made it to the top from which we could see brock's monument on the other side.

here's what you see.