Day 47 (Friday Aug 5) -Little Falls to Latham NY (75 Miles)

We are down to 3 more riding days.   Tomorrow we enter Vermont with an 80 mile ride as we head from Albany (Latham) to Brattleboro.   On Sunday we will head to Manchester, New Hampshire.   On Monday we will complete the last ride as we motorcade into Wallis Sands Beach in Rye NH for the completion of our journey.   Wow, we are getting down to the wire.

Today we cycled from our lodging in Little Falls, NY along the Mohawk River and Barge Canal.   We rode in a pace line and had a relatively fast ride adjacent to the barge canal on highway 5S (parallel's I90) and then on the bike path along the Mohawk river into the town of Latham.   We travelled thought the towns of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Schenectady, where we saw the large General Electric plant and research center.  We had a few large hills today (a total of 2,100' vertical) which will help us prepare for the much longer hills tomorrow in Vermont where we have a 5,500' vertical.   Tomorrow is billed as one of the toughest rides of the trip.   Tonight we are cleaning and lubing our bikes, checking tires, and preparing for tomorrow's long ride.

Here are a few photos of today's ride:

Here is our route map.  We spent last night in Little Falls, NY (dot at left center of map).  Today we rode 75 miles to Latham NY (next to Schenectady).   We have 3 days cycling remaining (about 220 miles) to reach our destination in Portsmouth, NH.   

Our route today followed the Mohawk River and Barge Canal

Here is a view of the Mohawk Barge Canal, still in use today.

Lock 17 on the Mohawk Barge Canal is one of the largest canal locks in the North America in terms of vertical drop (see below) 

Here is Lock 17 on the upstream side.   Boats going downstream enter the lock from the upstream side of the canal shown here. 

Here is a downstream view of lock 17.   Boats moving up river enter the lock from downstream side on the lower right.

Here is a close-up of the doors on the lock that hold back the water, much like a dam.   This is very impressive engineering.

Here is a view of Lock 17 from the highway as we departed Little Falls early this morning.

Here are the photographers early in the morning (Mary, Blythe, Russell, Barry)

At mile 34 we pull into our first SAG stop at Karen's Ice Cream.  The Black Rocket is resting here with some pals.

We check in for a break as well.   Most of our riders stepped up to some Ice Cream at Karen's.

Diane is one of our cyclists.   She is a gynecologist from California on sabbatical (and an excellent cyclist)

We enter the bike path on the Mohawk River.   It is paved and has great views of the River 

Here is lock #8, which spans the width of the River

Our biking group stops for a picture (Montreal Mike, Boston Matt, Spokane Mary, Russell and Blythe)

The downstream side of lock #8 is impressive (it is actually a dam adjacent to the lock and regulates the water level at the lock)

The Mohawk bike trail is well shaded and nicely cool for todays' temperatures in the high 80's. 

We come across a Google Earth photo vehicle

Google is photographing streets and intersections in New York (pretty cool).  Blythe and Russell interrupt his lunch.

Our second SAG stop is on the bike trail.  See the birdhouse in the background.   This is a well maintained trail!

Nancy and Adrienne arrive at the SAG stop.   

They are wearing Designer Jersey's (see Nancy's above) and proud of it.  Nancy and Adrienne are mother and daughter cyclists, riding together on this trip.   Nancy (mother) completed this ride 5 years ago and

is back again, this time with daughter, having great fun together


It's 2 pm.   We decide to make a beeline for the hotel so that we can prepare for tomorrow's long ride to Vermont.

We follow the America by Bicycle van into Latham arriving at about 3pm.   

More tomorrow after we complete the ride into Vermont.

Love to All,
ME