Michigan Day 18 - Ansonia to Jersey Shore

 We've reached the Susquehanna River. The historical marker coming into town says there is a nearby island in the Susquehanna named "Long Island". An early settler named it that because he came from the Long Island in New York. He started calling the settlement he could see across the river from his home on Long Island "Jersey Shore", because that's what he could see across the water from the last time he lived on Long Island. The residents of Jersey Shore went with it. I am not making this up.

Today was a magnificent day. As good as it gets. 55 miles of perfect rail trail through preserved wild lands, all downhill. 

But first we had to say goodbye to the Colton Point Inn in Ansonia. Sigh.

After drinking my Frappuchino, I went to put the key in the box outside the never-opened office to find the office was open. There was still nobody from the motel there, it was open for the workers doing renovations. And there, in the office, was the sad, lonely, ignored, and forgotten coffee machine. Some nice Indian family needs to buy this place and put things in order.

When I planned this route, I discovered the rail trail, which follows Pine Creek all the way to the Susquehanna in Jersey Shore. 55 miles, all downhill. I had no idea what the surface would be like. Would it be an Ontario-style snowmobile trail with unrideable loose, coarse gravel? Or will it be smooth and nice crushed stone like the Great Allegheny Passage or the York Heritage Trail? 

There is no alternative to the trail for the first 15 miles, so I was paranoid about this.

Turns out ii is magnificent smooth crushed stone. I was so happy.

In fact, much of the trail is actually paved with chip seal. 

The Pine Creek Rail Trail is amazing. It goes through "The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania" for the first 25 miles or so. It's completely undeveloped and natural. This does mean no cell service, no restaurants, and no water for that stretch. There are pit toilets every five miles or so.

We found a trailside ice cream shop that served sandwiches in the tiny, tiny town of Cedar Run for lunch. This place is not on Google Maps.

They make great sandwiches. Cash or check only. There is no internet or cell service in town.

And then it's back to the beautiful rail trail through the forest. Jim, who was a bit behind me, says he saw a bear cub crossing the road ahead of him around here.

In Jersey Shore, the trail meets up with a still-active railroad. There is an old New York Central caboose in the trailside park, reminding us that the New York Central is "The Road to the Future".  The rail trail was an active railroad until 1988, when Conrail abandoned it. Contrail was the successor to the bankrupt Penn Central, which was the successor to the bankrupt New York Central. 

Here's the end of the rail trail in Jersey Shore. This is only a mile from our hotel.

And here is our hotel, the Gamble Farm Inn.

The Gamble Farm Inn appears to be halfhearted homegrown attempt to make an event space for weddings and stuff. There is a cavernous restaurant, mostly empty, with a stage fur music, where we ate. There is a bar, which was very popular because we are in rural Pennsylvania. And there are hotel suites in a building behind the restaurant, which has a gym and a lounge area on the first floor. It's weird. Our spacious suite is clean and comfortable, but it's furnished with a mishmash of old furniture like a college student apartment. There is no hotel desk or office, they text you a key code for your room like AirBnB. The room does have a coffee maker thank God.

This is the only lodging anywhere near here. No Indian people are involved in this operation. Obviously.

The Pine Creek Rail Trail is a winner. What a find! 177 feet of climb in 59 miles!

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19730602176

Michigan 26 Day 16 - Port Allegheny to Ansonia

It's very hilly here now. We had to go up one of them.

I believe this is the Eastern Continental Divide. We followed the Allegheny River to its headwaters, then had a 540 foot climb up to the summit. Then there was sweet glorious payback. It was all downhill for the last 25 miles, following Pine Creek, which flows into the Susquehanna.

Here's hill-hating Jim finally reaching the top of the hill. 

There's not much you can do about this, though. We have to cross the Eastern Continental Divide at some point. 

Today's challenge is there is not much out here. Our motel isn't actually in a town, and it's not near any restaurants. Our strategy was to eat at the last restaurant before the motel, and dawdle around all day so we would get to the restaurant at dinner time. This worked. Normally, we choose a motel that is walking distance from dinner, and we check in to the motel and get cleaned up before going out to eat.

The first step to dawdling around is to eat breakfast before we leave. This mighty fine diner was across the street from our motel in Port Allegheny.

Lunch was 20 uphill miles later at Fezz's Community Diner in Sweden Valley, just beyond Coudersport.

Check out this classic jukebox! Unfortunately, it's not working.

Fezz's is leaning hard into the 1950's diner thing.

Leaning very hard. Ouch my eyes.

Right after lunch, the big climb started. It was low ring all the way for me. The grade was 7 or 8 percent.

After 15 miles of screaming descent, the dawdling-til-dinner strategy continued at this laundromat in Galeton, which was behind a Kwik-Fill convenience store.

We refilled our snack bags at the Kwik-Fill, since there is nowhere for breakfast tomorrow, and a long ways to lunch at our remote hotel. We are definitely in Pennsyltucky out here.

We got to our restaurant for dinner around 5:30. Dawdling worked, and this restaurant was a win. It's the Old Antlers Inn.

With a name like that, you can be sure it's a taxidermy fest.

They have an inspired entree of Cheesesteak Pierogies. The bartender says the owner invented this himself.

Yesterday, when I was complaining on Facebook about the debasement of Rolling Rock, a friend of mine said he thought Straub Beer was still independent and brewed locally. Indeed it is. I'd never heard of Straub. It's quite good! Classic grandpa beer.

Here I am at our motel, the Colton Point Inn.

This would be the only lodging option, which means you have to accept that there is no place to eat nearby, no coffee in the morning, barely working Wifi (essentially useless) and therefore no streaming TV, despite the claim that there is free YouTube TV for guests. I'm writing this using the phone to connect to the Internet with LTE.

Jim was curious about what I was going to do since there was no coffee. I explained that I always have multiple layers of redundancy for critical systems, and showed him the giant Frappuchino I bought at the Kwik-Fill. There are also a stockpile of caffeinated gel packs in the snack bag.

There is not even any staff on site. Your room key is in a lock box on the door, and they text you the lock box code like an AirBnB.

The room is nice though, and the beds are very comfortable.

It was a great ride yesterday. We conquered the summit, and the weather was perfect. 50 miles and 1900 feet of climb. The last 25 miles were downhill with a tailwind.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19717342940

Michigan 26 Day 15 - Salamanca to Port Allegheny

 Pennsylvania is really hilly. Our mission is to ride across Pennsylvania to Maryland while going up as few hills as possible.

This is the unmarked crossing of the state line with New York.

Our first day was very successful. Fifty beautiful miles, and no hills of any significance. We followed the Allegheny River the whole way. The weather was perfect, with light tailwinds.

Are we going to have breakfast at the casino? Which will cost $23? Where we will have to stand in line first and be shamed for not being "Premiere Members"? Tim to the rescue!

Lunch was at this great cafe in downtown Olean, NY.

I experienced another Buffalo culinary specialty here, the Pizza Log. This is a deep fried egg roll with pepperoni and mozzarella cheese inside, instead of egg roll stuff. You dip it in marinara sauce when you eat it. I don't see pizza logs as very inspired or interesting. They are not great. I was hoping they might be the same as western Maryland's Pepperoni Rolls, which are awesome, but pizza logs are totally different.

We are at this perfectly fine old motel in Port Allegheny (RDOQ for sure), which is very helpfully next door to a Sheetz.

A Sheetz that sells Rolling Rock! A fine beer which has been absent from Maryland for years!

I am pretty outraged that InBev, the industrial corporate mega-brewer that bought Rolling Rock 20 years ago now brews it in New Jersey, had to remove the famous 33 words from the bottle because this beer has never been anywhere near the famous glass-lined tanks of Old Latrobe.

We took our Rolling Rock to this nice BYOB cafe a couple blocks over, where I had calamari and bad "Buffalo" wings. 

Port Allegheny is a nice small town for an overnight bike tour stop. It was a great day.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19700734259

Michigan 26 Day 14 - Springville to Salamanca

 Today was a purposefully short day of only 31 miles. Jim is still easing into touring, and there was an extended climb, where we crossed from the Lake Erie watershed into the Allegheny River->Ohio River->Mississippi River watershed. 

Here's Jim grinding up the hill.

I can't do my usual long distance zoom for this shot because I'm using an ancient backup phone, a Pixel 4. Maximum zoom is 2x. It doesn't have 5G capability, so it's been all LTE since my regular phone died. For days, I was amazed about how backwards Canada was, still using LTE everywhere, and then I realized it was my phone.

It turns out the short day was a good thing, since there was heavy rain mid day from about 11:30 to 1:00. We hung out at the motel until checkout at 11:00, and then went across the street to this might fine pizza place next to a bowling alley. Big bonus was there was a sheltered area to put the bikes out of the rain.

After we ate our pizzas, we got to look at the rain out the window for an hour.

We are staying at this ginormous Indian Casino in Salamanca, NY.

I hate casinos, and I avoid them, but the only other option is a dive motel where the only food nearby is Burger King. And the fancy Seneca Casino is not much more expensive. Our room is really, really nice, with a great view.

The food was OK but not great. It's Monday night, so the steak house option was closed, the bar was closed, the buffet is under renovation, which left a cafe (with a long line to wait in), or an Italian place with a short line (which turned out to be longer because all the "premiere members" got to go first, ahead of us regular people). My lasagna and wine was good, but overpriced, and rubbing our nose in the fact that we are not premiere members is obnoxious. I hate casinos.

Jim went for a walk after dinner to get some beer instead of paying $9/can at the casino. He came back with a six pack of 3 Floyds Zombie Dust, We are big 3 Floyds fans. And he was amazed that it was only $9 for the six pack at the beer store up the road, the same six pack costs $17 at his beer store in Catonsville. 

I said that's because we're on the res, and the Seneca beer store doesn't have to pay tax. Jim now wants there to be a res near us in Maryland somehow.

The town of Salamanca is pretty much a dump. It was once a huge railroad town, served by both the Erie and the B&O. The main railroad business was lumber. The entire town is on Seneca land. Only tribal members can own land, everyone else (including the railroads, historically) has to lease their land from the tribe. This has obviously been a disincentive to investment, by everyone except the Seneca Nation. The town is heavily subsidized by casino money. About half the businesses are marijuana dispensaries. I gather there is a lot of bickering between the Seneca Nation and the non-Seneca local government. In Canada, I rode through a lot of First Nations towns, which are also subsidized by casinos and dispensaries, but they are much nicer than Salamanca.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19686787406

Michigan 26 Day 13 - Buffalo to Springville

 I'm really enjoying Buffalo. Here's another amazing mural.

Then I had to go hang out with my friend Tim for a bit.

Jim had never heard of Tim Horton the person or Tim Horton's the donut shop until now. He had his first experience with Tim Horton's at the Tim Horton's across the street from the statue. (Of course there is a Tim Horton's across the street from the Tim Horton statue.)

Buffalo has a light rail system!

Today was a very short and pretty easy day. 34 miles and 1300 feet of climb. Jim is easing in to the bike touring. He does not like climbing, so I'm making the days with big climbs short. It was a beautiful day. Temperatures in the high 70s, sunny, little wind.

We stopped for lunch at the Boston Hotel in Boston, which was packed with locals on a Sunday afternoon. I can only imagine what this place is like during football season.

And in no time at all, we were at our Microtel Inn in Springville. Which is just outside of town, across from the Wal-Mart, the Tractor Supply, next to Lowes. There is nothing that makes me feel like I'm back in the USA, and not in a good way, like walking through the vast Wal-Mart parking lot while a creepy recording about job openings plays on loudspeakers. There were dozens of security cameras everywhere.

This is a great Microtel. It's new, cheap, and they have a guest laundry. Check out the thoughtful pannier hangers they provide!

We walked over to JD's Brew Pub on the other side of the Wal-Mart. In western New York State, a selection of local craft brews means they have multiple varieties of Gennessee. LOL.

Today I learned that there is more cool food from Buffalo than wings! Who'd'a thought! This is a "Beef on Weck" sandwich. And the beer is a Gennessee Red Kolsch.

I asked our very young waitress, who was probably lucky to graduate high school, what "Weck" is. She had no idea. But she did helpfully explain what beef is.

Perplexity.ai comes to the rescue again. "Weck" is short for "Hummelweck", which is the roll. It's a thick-crusted roll, where the top is dipped in the au jus, and then rolled in caraway seeds and coarse salt. The sandwich comes with horseradish too. It's fantastic.

Here's the Strava track for today.

https://www.strava.com/activities/19673592276

Michigan 26 Day 12 - Jordan to Buffalo

 I'm back in the USA. I rode over the Peace Bridge to Buffalo, and met up with my friend Jim at the Holiday Inn Express downtown. Jim stays at Holiday Inn Express for his job all the time, so he has lots of points for free rooms. It's so fancy.

The downside is I can see myself clearly in the brightly lit bathroom mirror, and I have discovered that I have tan spots on my head where sun shines through my bike helmet to go with the pale stripes where the helmet straps go. 

It was a short day, only 46 miles, with only one climb to get back on top of the Niagara Escarpment. My plan was to take my time getting going and to let my tent dry out, since I won't be using it again. But at 6:00 AM, I wake up to the sounds of gunfire off in the distance. What the hell. And then there is rumbling. Maybe there is a military base nearby and the rumbling is some kind of munitions drill?

But the rumbling continues, and gets louder and more frequent. I open the phone, which doesn't even have LTE coverage, just one bar of HPSA 3G, and wait five minutes for the radar map to load on Weather Underground. It is thunder, there are massive storms all over to the south of me. But none where I am. Yet.

So I quickly pack up and get going. Since I am in a more developed area now, and in Canada, there will always be a perfect place to shelter from any rain storm within 5 miles or less.

Coffee and donuts requirements met, no rain yet. In fact it is starting to clear up.

After another 10 miles and a big climb back onto the Niagara Escarpment, I am on a bike path along the Niagara River, and it's all bike paths and super-low traffic riverfront parkway the rest of the way to the Peace Bridge to Buffalo.

And it goes right by Niagara Falls.

Now my bike and I have visited both sides of Niagara Falls. The view is way, way more impressive from the Canadian side.

The route from Buffalo to Niagara Falls is also way better, flatter, and much less traffic on the Canadian side than riding through Grand Island on the American side.

Here's the bike trip update from our visit to the American side: https://thevcblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/erie-canal-tour-day-1-buffalo-to.html

It's 20 more miles to the border crossing, and I have about $80 of Canada money to get rid of. I decided to eat lunch right before I crossed at this Thai restaurant in Port Erie.

It's much better than it looks on the outside.

At this point, I have $40 Canadian left, so I decide to go for the obvious, logical choice for bike touring, which would be to buy booze at the duty free shop.

Would you believe that the Duty Free Shop WILL NOT SELL ANYTHING TO PEOPLE ON BIKES? Seriously? I couldn't believe it! Apparently, they think I could just turn around and go back where I came from instead of riding over the bridge to the United States.

So I'm leaving the Duty Free shop, full of disappointment, but with my Canada money converted to America money at a really, really bad exchange rate, and the Canadian Border Patrol car pulls me over.

Officer: "Did you just come from the Duty Free Shop?"

me: "Yes. Would you believe they WILL NOT SELL ANYTHING TO PEOPLE ON BIKES?"

Officer: "Seriously?"

me: "Apparently, they think I could just turn around and go back where I came from instead of riding over the bridge to the United States."

The CBP officers thought I had just ridden over from the United States somehow, but I explained how I got there (cutting through a park to get to the Duty Free Shop) and they were super helpful. It turns out you are not allowed to ride a bike on the traffic lanes on the Peace Bridge, and it is extremely not obvious how to get to the very nice bike lane. They put their flashers on and lead me to the bike lane, which leads to a special bike entrance to the US Border Patrol office.

I don't have any pictures of this, because my phone battery was dead at that point. No picture of the border boundary in the middle of the bridge, and no picture of Lake Erie. Getting to Lake Erie means I've ridden my bike next to all five Great Lakes on this trip. The backup phone I'm using is an ancient Pixel 4, that had been sitting in a drawer for 5 or 6 years. And I couldn't charge it overnight at the campground yesterday.

Once I got to the Holiday Inn Express, it was only 2:00. Jim stayed there the night before. He got to Buffalo with his bike by doing a one way car rental, for only $240! So I got my phone charged up and spread my tent, which was soggy with dew out to dry, and reorganized my gear. Since there will be no more camping, I can send the camping gear home along with the two front panniers at the nearby UPS store.

I learned that my camping gear and the two panniers weigh 19 lbs 4 oz. I learned when we rode the train up that all my gear together on the bike weighs 60 lbs when I consolidated it all into a duffel bag to check as baggage. 

Buffalo has some really great murals. 

For dinner, we had a must-do culinary bucket list item to check off. This is the Anchor Bar.

Where Buffalo Wings were invented!

Are they as good as Daniel's? It's very, very close. They taste the same. If you go to Daniels when they are not busy and the wings are fresh out for the fryer, Daniel's is actually better executed. But not when Daniels is really busy, and they are serving wings they cooked earlier. These were a little soggy, like the grease was not hot enough. But they were really, really good.

Obviously, you can't say Daniel's wings are more authentic than the Anchor Bar, but I discovered that the Anchor Bar sells their own wing sauce!

I suspect this is just repackaged Louisiana Hot Sauce, but I am a little suspicious.

On the way home, we had some more beer at the Big Ditch Brewing Company, which is the biggest craft brewer in Buffalo. Very tasty.

Big Ditch is a reference to the Erie Canal, which terminates here.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/19658735819