Foolish Mansion

• Stopped for salt water taffies. Mm good:) #
• Got up late again:) we rode 31 miles yesterday. And climbed 770 feet. We are outside adams center. #
• Back on the road after a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes:) #
• Pit stop in dexter. Dee dee get out of my laboratory! #
• Met a guy doing the same route as us. #
• Ran gun a pretty big storm. Took shelter in a library. #
• Some of the cloud formations here are just breathtaking. #
• About to board the ferry to take up to canada:) #

• Took a rest day yesterday. Played in the salmon river all day. Best day yet. #
• Stopping for groceries. Ice cream! #
• Wow a corn field. Havent seen one of those since idiana #
• Stopped at the library in adams to upload pictures and eat lunch. #

• Just got started today. Had to Go to church. Yesterday we rode 40 miles. #
• Stopped at wendys for an obnoxious amount of time to upload pictures. Back on the road. #
• Lost my biking gloves back at camp somewhere. #
• Almost out of the new york marshes. #
• Oh look another hill. Better get used to it. #
• Stopping for ice cream cones #
• Just got to camp. 39.8 miles today. The camp site is 7.5 miles out of the way. Great. This place is creepy when it is deserted. #
• The guy who owns this place is really nice. He gave us wood for a campfire! #

 

Fulton, NY - After spending two days at camp while I rested and the kids went stir crazy, we were ready to hit the road yesterday morning (July 9).

 

Chris had sent a package for me to Fulton, NY, forty miles away. This was our destination for the night.

At 9 that morning, I realized that the post office would close at noon and there was no way I could reach Fulton in time to pick it up. I dispatched Joseph with instructions to make Fulton by noon, not realizing how many hills we would be encountering along the way.

 

After Joseph left, the rest of us packed up and headed off for a more leisurely trip. With the decision made regarding our changed route and decreased daily mileage, I felt incredibly free and relaxed for the first time in days. The weather was in the eighties with cool breezes off the lake. For every up hill, there was a delicious down hill. Since I was no longer worried about mileage, the ride itself seemed easier. My leg felt much better now that I was walking up the hills at my own pace, not that of an overly ambitious schedule.

 

As we left Sodus Point we passed multiple marinas and a bay with a strong wind, just right for sailing. I know Chris would have loved it.

 

After Sodus Point we went up and down over miles of apple and cherry orchards, the cherry trees heavy with bright red fruit. We found a little country kitch store for our mid-morning (11am) snack and had biscuits with maple syrup. There were flowers every where . I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the ubiquitous hot dog stand in the parking lot but I was.

 

New Yorkers must love their hot dogs. They are almost as prevalent as gas stations. I am going to have to try one. They have a half a dozen or more different kinds of meat with as many toppings as an ice cream store.

 

 When we were leaving, out of habit I told Patrick, “Get to the car.”

 

He grinned and said, “I’ll have to go a very long way to do that.”

 

After our snack we rode on to Fair Haven, NY, which consisted of one steep hill down and one steep hill up. There was one gas station going down and one gas station going up.

 

After Fair Haven, we realized that Joseph was without food, since I had sent him off without any money or a lunch. We kept trying to call him to no avail. I called Chris, who confirmed with the campground that Joseph had forgotten his phone. Fortunately, the camp ground send someone to meet us along our route so that we did not have to back track.

 

In Hannibal, NY, I began to get worried that Joseph would not realize that he could get my package by knocking on the back door, if he arrived after noon. (I had learned this by calling the post office at noon to see if he had arrived yet.)

 

Mary Elizabeth volunteered to ride on alone to Fulton while I waited with Patrick and Jenny for the man bringing the phone. He had said it would take an hour.

 

We sat in the shade of an abandoned restaurant beside a state highway, reading and glad for an excuse to get out of the sun.

 

After we got the phone, we rode on to Fulton. We were on a state highway with a wide shoulder but the mack trucks were still unnerving. I made the kids keep in a straight line as far from the road as possible. The hills were much gentler but after so many miles of country roads I felt as if I were riding on a freeway. It was a relief to get to Fulton. I was more than ready to put the family back together. This was the first time on the trip that we had split up.

 

I had not realized how large a town Fulton is. It even has a Walmart, something we had not seen since Canada, ironically.

 

So, how to find two kids without a cell phone in a town?

 

We scanned the antique car show but they were not there. We looked in the Dunkin Donuts, but they were not there. We rode to the post office, our original meeting place, and still they were not there.

 

Then Patrick pointed out a hand made sign,”Art Show by the River- 2 to 7” .

 

“What time is it?” Patrick asked. “There’s an art show.”

 

Patrick and Mary Elizabeth love art. I suddenly knew right where to look.

 

In case I was wrong, I stationed Jennifer and Patrick at the post office. I sternly warned Patrick not to climb on any architectural features, of which there were many.

 

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” he said.

 

“Yes, but after sitting here a while, you would have,” I replied.

 

I found Mary Elizabeth and Joseph at the art show, as anticipated, and we all headed to camp. Joseph had eaten only one can of tuna and one can of baked beans that he had found in his bike trailer. He was starving, exhausted and glad that I had brought him a bag of trail mix to hold him over.

 

Mary Elizabeth made dinner for all of us while I did the laundry in the shower.

 

The shower was on the other side of the campground. We had to walk past all the seasonal campers to get there.

 

I love looking at seasonal campgrounds. They are so eccentric. It’s like pink flamingo city.

 

One guy had a pavilion tent with a deck under it in front of his camper. He had a grill, shelves of grilling tools and two chairs beside the grill. For the Fourth of July he had put up a big “Happy Fourth of July” sign on the front of the foundation board of his deck. He had red, white and blue hanging lights on a string of wire hanging at the edge of his camper awning, a red, white and blue table cloth with stars and stripes on his picnic table out front, flags stuck all around the little circular garden he had made in his miniature “yard” and another flag flying from his trailer.

 

On the way back to the campsite, I saw that there was a lively Bingo game going on at the picnic tables set up in rows by the camp office. The caller  could be heard all over the campground. “B Twenteeeeeeeeeee” she would call out. “I Thirty niiiiiiiiiiine.” Every once in a while someone would call out “Bingo!” and the little greying crowd would roar with excitement. The bingo players were all smoking like chimnies, sitting right in front of the camp’s “No Smoking” sign.

 

Unfortunately, Patrick also noticed this game. We were camped across a field from the office but his voice carries. While I was washing clothes, Patrick stood up and yelled, “BINGO!” across the field. Then he dove behind the picnic table.

 

The bingo game came to an abrupt halt. Everyone started asking, “Who won?” There was a bit of an uproar and a lot of confusion. Then the game resumed, no doubt in an atmosphere of suspicion.

 

Even slow days have their drama.