Out of the mountains and onto the Great Lakes

Sunday: Father's Day.
Go Shannon.

So here we are, leaving our nice little campground on Schroon Lake on Sunday morning, thinking we had made it past the mountains of New England. Little did we know that on Sunday, we would climb 6000 feet and descend 5000. It was sad that we hadn't quite made it past the hills, but we knew we were close. We rolled into a region of lakes at the end of the day. We stopped at The Tap Room bar of Raquette Lake for dinner, where Shannon got his Father's day Manhattan (even though they apparently made it incorrectly), and the family got the gist of the town's gossip from the old-timers sitting around. We then rode another five to a New York State Campground at Eighth Lake. This chain of lakes had really creative names. There were eight of them.

When we got to the campground, the park ranger guy told us that since there was no established rate for cyclists to camp in the park, he let us camp for free, which was very nice of him. NYS campgrounds are actually pretty nice places.

We rolled out the next morning on Shelby's 14th birthday. Amazingly we found ourselves going downhill for an entire thirty miles. We got to Boonville, NY about midafternoon and 45 miles into our ride. Although we hoped to go further, no campgrounds (or even hotels) were answering their phones or were deemed unworthy for lack of showers or laundry services. We REALLY needed to do laundry on Monday. We ended up in the Boonville laundromat for a while, then backtracked a mile to the Big Brown Barn campground we had passed on our way into town. The day was cut short but at least we got laundry done.

Taking a break in Booneville

Shelby's day-of birthday celebration was noted with a bucket of butter pecan ice cream and a chocolate bar, as well as a game of ping pong in that Big Brown Barn.

Today we vowed to make up for our short day with a long one. We haven't exactly been getting on the road at early hours, leaving most days between 9 and 10 when we're  waking up at 7 or 8. That's been a bit challenging with 5 to 6 hours of riding each day, not including time for breaks and meals.

We were on the road before 9 this morning. Once again, our mileage today was mostly downhill, a welcome event after so much climbing the past week. We ticked off the miles pretty fast today.

Speaking of ticking, Megan's bike began to do that at about mile 5. Every time she pedaled (so pretty much all the time) her bike would start clicking. It was loud and echoed really well in the morning. After about mile 20 this became quite annoying, and there was fear the bike would simply quit working. Somehow, after climbing a steep hill out of a little town, the bike stopped clicking for no reason at all. This was good news, because the nearest bike shop was at mile 77, and we would have all been driven to insanity before then.

We kept up our fast pace to make it to Fulton at mile 83 tonight. We did get a bit turned around for about a mile after missing a turn today, thankfully still not a major mistake. Upon arrival, we hit the bike shop for a fix of Megan's bike, where we also learned that there was a major thunderstorm alert for the night. So now, we're in our third hotel. It's raining hard outside, and  they were expecting hail as well, so this was probably a good decision.

Road Kill Report: Squirrel, Rabbit, Squirrel, Squirrel, Bird
Possum, Bird, Otter, Deer, Frog, Deer, Bird, Squirrel, Frog, Chipmunk, Otter

Money Found:  $0.04