{"id":3052,"date":"2019-09-18T22:44:37","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T02:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=3052"},"modified":"2019-09-18T22:44:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T02:44:37","slug":"cow-glade-and-climbing-gravel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2019\/09\/18\/cow-glade-and-climbing-gravel\/","title":{"rendered":"Cow Glade and Climbing Gravel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Memorial Day, I went for a ride on some roads that were in nearby towns, but on which I’d never before been. I started out riding west out of Holyoke, just into Westfield, and then I turned north, off my beaten path, just past Hampton Ponds State Park<\/a>. This took me up into Southampton, and I rode on a few back roads, one of them called White Loaf Road (I do not know whence that name comes). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the roads I was on briefly was Brickyard Road, which had a bit of a dirt portion. Also, I stopped on this road because I noticed large animals in the trees near me. They turned out to be a herd of cows. I could not see a pasture or field nearby – they were just hanging out in the woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of them took some interest in me, but many ignored me, as cows are wont to do (click on picture to see larger version).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Herd<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Just after than I got to Route 10, the main highway through Southampton. I was on it very briefly going north, and then headed west on Fomer Rd., another new one to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case I headed into the unknown. I knew from looking at maps online what direction the road would go, but not much about how hilly it was or how paved. It turned out to be paved a good way, and it climbed a ways up (as it headed more northwest), then went a bunch downhill as the pavement condition got worse. After a bunch of descent, the road had turned north, and it became gravel. And I don’t mean a nicely packed dirt road – there were some sections like that – but a lot of it was pretty loose gravel. Not a nice surface on which to bicycle. I’m just glad I have hybrid tires (32mm wide) and not narrow road tires, which would do even worse on gravel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this road there was more climbing. I had certainly expected some climbing, as the road went close to a ridge that I’ve passed over many times before. By the time this road turned north, it was paralleling the ridge. The road had changed its name to Lyman, and I was in the town of Westhampton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oddly, the dirt section seemed to last longer than it had looked on the map, relative to the sections I’d ridden earlier in the trip. It took quite a while to get to the end of the road, at Route 66. I kept getting on short sections that had a firmer surface, only to then encounter more loose gravel. There was at least one downhill section where I had to be really careful not to slide, but it was more uphill than down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually I did get to 66, and headed east over to Outlook Farm for a quick stop at their store. From there the trip was mostly downhill, as I headed back into Southampton and then to Holyoke on more familiar roads. It was a nice afternoon of biking, with a total distance of 32 miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next: Exploring even closer to home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Memorial Day, I went for a ride on some roads that were in nearby towns, but on which I’d never before been. I started out riding west out of Holyoke, just into Westfield, and then I turned north, off my beaten path, just past Hampton Ponds State Park. This took me up into Southampton, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3054,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052\/revisions\/3054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}