Sunday - Watkins Glen, NY to Lake George, NY - 298 miles

Woke up nice and early in order to to a hike in Watkins Glen. I was the only person in the parking lot at 8am, and had the whole hike to myself. Very pretty, lots of waterfalls, got good and wet walking around. Met a couple folks at the very end on my way back who were setting up tripods for "the shot". They were going to take the bus to the top and walk back. Hiked the stairway to Mt Doom back to the parking lot, where I was still the only person there.

On the road by 10, ready to begin my day without brake lights. Temperature was much cooler than the last 2 days, didn't see anything higher than 65 and a pretty good wind as well. I put on the heated jacket liner for the first time, and that took the edge off nicely.

Packing up

79 to Ithaca started out nice, rising above the lake for nice views, but then straightened out completely. Followed 79 all the way to Whitney Point, where I picked up 206. 206 was also pretty straight, but had some decent views.

Long views on 79 and 206

So far the 'no brake light' thing wasn't going too badly. I made sure no one was behind me most of the time, and through towns I put my flashers on, used hand signals, watched my mirrors, and gave people plenty of warning.

Almost lost my camera a couple times. I had the strap around my wrist, and the camera resting in the side pocket of my tankbag. The strap was plenty long enough for me to reach the bars and make turns, so I would forget it was attached after a few minutes. A car let me get around them at some point, so I dropped my left hand back to give them a wave. Out flies the camera from the tankbag, hanging on by the strap and waving in the wind. Yikes. I ended up doing that 4 or 5 times during this trip, and it scared the crap out of me every time.

At one point the pavement just ended for a while - nice surprise

At Bainbridge I traded 206 for 7 which paralleled I-88 for the most part. 7 was a nice alternative to the slab - nothing great, but nicer than just flying along with semis. I stopped at the Soccer Hall of Fame to take some pictures of the outside for my son, who at 7 is of course completely into soccer.

I passed a nice looking BMW R1100S parked along the way, a bike I always loved the looks of. I was looking for an interesting place to stop for lunch, and saw lots of bikes and the Triumph truck parked at the Brooks House of BBQ, so I pulled in. Lunch unfortunately was just OK, not great.

Brooks

Um, OK

Hit the road again, and in a few minutes the R1100RS that I saw earlier was riding behind me. We had a nice ride for about 35 miles, SUNY to SUNY, Oneonta to Cobleskill. He hit the turnoff for a shortcut to 10 that I missed. I had to backtrack through Cobleskill to get back on 10, probably lost 20 minutes doing that.

Took 10 all the way up to Adirondack Park, nice and empty but with poor pavement for the most part. Once in the Adirondacks I took 10 to 8 to 30 to 8 to 28, and I have to say it was pretty dull. The roads were certainly not crowded, and the scenery pretty, but pretty straight and bumpy. Got behind 2 s-l-o-w cruiser riders for a while, I figured I'd just ride cruiser-style and soak in the scenery, but that got pretty old pretty quick. Took a turnoff for Golf Course Road, and that turned out to be a very nice alternative down to Warrensburg.

Looking back on 10

Nice place for a bouy - I mean traffic light

Finally!

Here's a coaster I haven't ridden yet

Wonder what time the park opens?

The slow, slow bikers

Almost ready to leave them

Everything in it's own bag this time around - worked great

Got into Lake George around 6pm, headed straight for the Hearthstone campground on 9N. The place was 95% deserted. Set my tent up, ditched all the non-essentials and headed down to Canada Street - finally I was here! Found a spot (not hard to do), and thought I would put my Phantom in one of the hard bags. I pushed and prodded, folded and squeezed, but just couldn't make it happen. I had done it once before, but the magic origami pattern was eluding me this night. I'm sure it was quite comical for the folks watching me. Eventually I gave up and cable-locked it to the bike. Did some walking, checked out some rides, and made my way down to Quizno's, which I had been thinking about for some time (pretty much the whole time after my crappy lunch at Brooks). Closed! I don't think it was even 8pm yet and they were closed. Bummer. Ended up getting some pretty good slices of pizza from Capri's, and some ice cream from Bob's (highly, highly recommended).

Wow, that's some storage on that thing

I actually kind of like the color scheme - different

This guy was parked on Canada Street every night, more or less the same spot.

Check out the bedliner paint job on the front fairing

Got back to the campground after dark, and the traffic from 9N was a bit loud. Mostly loud pipes, I was thinking it was going to be really bad later in the week. Saw an owl sitting in a tree on my way to the bathrooms, and listened to them hooting as I fell asleep.

My iPod shuffle started repeating today, I had gone through all 12+ hours of tunes already. Did 0 miles of slab today, and saw 0 McMansions, just lots of small towns and empty roads.

Crossing my fingers for Albany tomorrow.