Be careful what you wish for.

We've been following route 5 along the shore of Lake Erie for a second day. It's a fine road for cycling because all of the serious long distance automobile traffic takes I-90, which runs parallel to route 5, and most of the rest of the traffic takes US-20, which also runs parallel. We've been seeing lots of cycle tourists on route 5.

The only complaint I have (there's always one), is that the pavement in route 5 is pretty chewed up in places and instead of buckling down and resurfacing the whole road, they have been doing little asphalt patches. Yesterday going into Darwin was particularly annoying because there were loose pieces of asphalt from the patches littering the shoulder.

I wished they would fix the road, and unfortunately today I got what I wished for. They ground off the old surface and are getting ready to put down new pavement. But until that new pavement arrives, it's not a good surface for biking. We were looking forward to crossing the state line into Pennsylvania, not because it's a new state, but because we knew the construction would stop at the state line.

Hurray! New pavement awaits at the state line.

It's easy to impress your friends by riding around NY State, especially if they have a shaky grasp of geography. For example, last week it only took us an hour or so to bike from Amsterdam (NY) to Rotterdam (NY). Today we completed a muliday ride from Rome (NY) to Barcelona (NY).

Barcelona is a significant milestone because we altered our original route to avoid some hills in southern NY, and Barcelona is the point where we got back onto the original plan.

The first European arrivals in Barcelona were French soldiers a who cut a trail inland from Barcelona harbor, following an older Indian trail. To understand the importance of that trail, take a look at this picture.

Lakeside vinyards with a ridge in the background.

All morning, as we followed the lake shore, we could see a ridge a few miles south of us parallel to the lake shore. Even though the ridge is right next to Lake Ontario, rainfall on the other side of the ridge flows into the Allegheny River watershed, thence into the Ohio, then the Mississippi and finally into the Gulf of Mexico. A trail across that ridge provided a connection between French territory around the great lakes and French territory around the Port of New Orleans.

The Allegheny River watershed reaches almost to Lake Erie.

Unfortunately for the French, that connection was broken when they lost control of the southern side of the great lakes during the French and Indian war in the 1750s.

Once we left NY and entered Pennsylvania, we stopped a couple of times to make sure we kept our fluids topped off. That's always important when cycling.

We ended up tonight in Erie PA. They are kicking off a 3 day festival tonight, so our timing is good.

The Edison fountain, built in 1929 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the light bulb.

Creating paint and chalk street drawings for the festival.

We'll stop by tomorrow to see the finished results (unless rain washes them away).

Erie is still an active port. The Saint Clair at dock.

A couple of bird questions: In the beginning of this trip I was seeing one or two gold finches at a time. In the last week or so I have been seeing groups of 4 or 5. Are these family units? If so, the chicks must be almost as big as the adults by now and seem to be just as agile flyers.

Turkey vultures like dead stuff. Today I noticed that the top of a tree they were roosting in seems to be dead. Are they killing the tree? Perhaps with guano?

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