T1 Day 58 (Keelin)

 Day 58: 8/3/2023


Today woke up at lock 16 on the Erie Canal… beautiful free campsite but no water :/

Since we have been so fascinated by the locks on the canal, this was sort of an exciting place to sleep!!! Or it would have been if we didn’t arrive so late almost in the dark the night before. Anyway, it was quiet and no one else was camping in the area. We had enough water to cook breakfast (oatmeal of course) and then we then went to stewart’s shops. This was very nostalgic from my college days when one of the only establishments in the small upstate new york town was a stewart’s shops. We filled up our waters and went to the bathroom- kayla and I also got food that we were going to need for the rest of the trip. We got right back on the canal trail and headed east. Thankfully most of the trail was paved. We were all feeling a bit sluggish today… not sure if it was the string of long days we just accomplished or if it was the dreary weather but neither were helping that’s for sure. We decided to treat ourselves to a nice lunch at the halfway-ish point of Amsterdam, NY. We all got some nice salads and smoothies at Evolve Eatery that was literally right on the path!! We got a few miles down the road from lunch and it started pouring. With loud thunderous booms pretty much directly above us. We decided to seek shelter in a small hut off the side of the trail until the rain lightened. We biked 3 more miles into Schenectady and made the decision to shorten our route for the day. Instead of following the canal around the northern side of the city and arounddddd, we were going to take a more direct route. We decided to follow “US Bicycle Route 5”. We knew there were going to be busy roads because it is a metro area. This worked until we got to a huge highway intersection that just did not look appealing or safe to us. We went back to the drawing board. We found a way to go around that whole situation through back roads and quickly jumped on it. We finally got into albany… not our first city we navigated so we a bit more confident. Our warmshowers host greeted us and we were ushered into the basement apartment that we had been told had no furniture and was in need of painting. We see immediately that the ceiling has been ripped out of most of the apartment and there is a distinct cat pee smell (i don’t actually know this smell since i don’t have cats but kayla’s nose was quite tuned into this). This may win the prize for most bizzare warmshowers we have had yet. We put our bikes against the wall, took showers, went out to eat dinner, and the smell slapped us in the face immediately upon our return. We all set up our sleeping pads together in the only bedroom that has a ceiling intact lol. Goodnight !!!

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