Off to Niagara Falls

 Started the day in Hamilton CA today with the destination of Niagara Falls, NY. Beautiful day, clear skies and in the low 70's at the start. We had a lot of ground to cover. Pretty flat at the start with one big climb of a solid 13% grade for about 3/4 of a mile or so. Lots of work and was rewarded with more than a dozen miles of a flat plateau with wonderful views of Lake Ontario to our left. The road was well paved with wine vineyards and corn field on borders of the road.

We moved at a nice clip of 17 miles per hour as a gentle tail wide helped us. Take a look at the elevation profile of the ride below and you'll see that we finally dropped off of the plateau at about 25 miles.

The ride's routes are set up by Chuck Swaney and I'm amazed how he can plan these routes from the comfort of his home thousand of miles away and create such beautiful rides.

We had lunch in St Catherines which is on the edge of Lake Ontario. The picnic lunch was set up in a nice park with an impressive carousel.

Then it was on to the highlight of the day, Niagara Falls. The route avoided most of the traffic between Niagara on the Lake and the falls by following a meandering bike path. 

The falls were impressive as expected along with the summer visitors clogging up the walkways but we were able to get some nice views of the America Falls and the Horseshoe Falls before crossing the Rainbow bridge into the US. We won't be re-entering Canada for seven days as we circle Lake Ontario. 

Tomorrow, we continue to head East with one of the routes spending most of the day on the Erie Canal. in 2021 I spent 6 days riding from Buffalo to Albany NY along the Erie Canal and I'm looking forward to covering some of the same ground for a day or so.

See all of today's photos (link)

Keep the rubber side down,

Brian Cox