{"id":3594,"date":"2022-09-06T20:42:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T00:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=3594"},"modified":"2022-09-06T20:42:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T00:42:50","slug":"journey-to-the-west-day-1-over-the-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2022\/09\/06\/journey-to-the-west-day-1-over-the-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey to the West – Day 1: Over the Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back in June I took a week-long bike trip to celebrate my 50th birthday. I rode across New York State, following the Erie Canalway Trail<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did not ride that trail at first, though. I initially had to spend a day getting from Holyoke to Albany. I loaded up my luggage (2 large pannier bags on either side of my rack, and a backpack bungied on the rack between them) and headed west, riding through Westfield, and up into Montgomery, MA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The climb into Montgomery is long, and is steep at points, but I made okay time, considering the extra weight strapped onto the bike. After passing through the town center, I had a nice long downhill run into the town of Huntington, and got into that town’s center just under 2 hours after leaving home. Here is the Huntington library, with its blue trim (click on pictures to embiggen):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

From Huntington, I continued west on US 20, next passing into the town of Chester. 20 follows the Westfield River, and there are a few spots to get a good view, like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

In Chester, the road started to take me slowly uphill. The area where it started to climb was fairly populated (not sure if this was the town center, though). I thought this old building was interesting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

I spent a bunch of time climbing from here, as Route 20 continued west into Beckett, MA. In Beckett, I intersected Route 8, and took that road north. After some more up and down riding (but mostly up), I got to the village of North Beckett. I stopped here to eat the lunch I’d brought with me, in a little park by a creek. There were some shady benches there, and the park contained a bunch of veterans’ memorials:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Creek<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Large<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Large<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Curving<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From there I had a bit more climbing to do as I continued north, and then I turned off Route 8 to go west, and downhill a bunch, into the city of Pittsfield. I went straight through downtown Pittsfield and picked up Route 20 again, which I followed into the town of Hancock (passing Hancock Shaker Village<\/a>), and then went up another hill which peaked just before the state line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was possibly the biggest downhill run of the day, as the road descended for 2.5 miles, crossing into New York just a bit below the top. I continued riding west, through New Lebanon. At one point I stopped to rest, and saw these flowers by the roadside:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

After some web searching, I believe these are dame’s rocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passing through the town of Nassau, I crossed Kinderhook Creek a few times. Here is the creek seen from one of those bridges:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Further along in Nassau I stopped for dinner at a place called Tacos Diablo. I had 3 small carnitas tacos, along with a pineapple soda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing on 20, there was some more up and down as I got near the Albany area. Just before I reached Rensselaer, I saw this business:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

From there, it was downhill all the way to the Husdon River. I crossed the river on a bike\/pedestrian bridge, and then made my way a few more miles through Albany to my lodging for the night. My total distance for the say was just about 89 miles, and took me a bit over 12 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Next: the beginning of the trail itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in June I took a week-long bike trip to celebrate my 50th birthday. I rode across New York State, following the Erie Canalway Trail. I did not ride that trail at first, though. I initially had to spend a day getting from Holyoke to Albany. I loaded up my luggage (2 large pannier bags … 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":[19,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594"}],"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=3594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3608,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3594\/revisions\/3608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}