Day 45, Hamburg, NY, 81 miles

It was a perfect route for the directionally-challenged; go four blocks from the hotel, turn right, and follow Rt 5 (aka Lakeview Drive) for 57 miles. Lake Erie wasn’t right off the drive, but sat back a hundred yards or two, playing hide and seek with us through vineyards, undeveloped woods, and lake-front homes with grassy yards that stretched from the road’s shoulder to the lakes very edge. The road surface was in good condition, the weather cool, and the fields of grapes a refreshing change from all of the corn and soy we’ve been seeing. There was the obligatory stop for the photo at the state line. I’m running out of new poses, I use them to tell o one state from another. But I have five days in New York to think of something new. We stopped in Barcelona at the Daniel Reed Memorial Pier, which featured a stone lighthouse and for reasons unbeknownst to me, what looked like a large beached pirates’ ship. We had our first SAG stop in Dunkirk’s Memorial Park. It has a nice view of the lake, a marina, and a coal-fired electrical generating plant which got its coal by barge on Lake Erie. Sue and I got flats at the same time, and as usual, the ABB van pulled up before I could get the front wheel off the bike. It was lucky for me, because I forgot to put the tubes I bought yesterday in my bike bag. The van has a case of tubes. So I changed my tire, Christin changed Sue’s and we were off again to the city of Hamburg and a new Comfort Inn that is pretty nice.