Starting the day with freshly laundered clothes (thanks again, Gretchen!), we headed out from Canandaigua on route 20 to the east. After leaving behind the lake there, we passed by a number of the other Finger Lakes, including Seneca, Cayuga, and Skaneateles Lakes, which made the riding quite scenic. We knew we would stop every 20 or so miles for a break, but the terrain quickly turned to rolling hills, making our progress a little slower.
We had a quick stop in the waterfront town of Geneva, where we ate breakfast at a nice restaurant near Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Another quick stop around 50 miles in at the Patisserie in Skaneateles for some baked goods at Gretchen's recommendation left us a little more refueled for more hills. Dave and Don got a chance to run through the sprinklers there to cool down.
When we got on the road again, we quickly noticed the day heating up. Combined with the constant up-and-down rolling hills, we were sweating like crazy and our legs were in pain by the time we made it to noon. Some of these hills must have been about an 8% grade and stretched for anything between a half mile and two miles.
We stopped quickly in a couple places along the way to grab cold drinks, and rode through some quaint towns.
Though we had known there was a chance of bad weather when we started riding at the beginning of the day, we had hoped it would pass us by or we would just some brief rain. However, as we approached the town of Cazenovia, where we planned to stop for lunch, we saw the thunderstorm clouds behind us. They ominously chased in into the Tops grocery store parking lot, where we locked up our bikes just inside the doors and foraged for food among the aisles.
A few minutes after arriving, we heard the rain start, accompanied by some thunder and lightning that seemed almost directly overhead. We took a look out the doors and saw drivers struggling to get to their cars and out on the road.
This made us feel justified in taking an extra long lunch break, during which we enjoyed our typical turkey-lettuce-cheese wraps and other assorted semi-healthy items. We had been so sweaty that we started shivering!
The weather advisory continued, but we hoped that the lightning was gone and so we got on the road again.
For the rest of the afternoon, the weather vacillated between a light drizzle and a steady downpour.
The sweat from earlier in the day was washed off (er, not fully- definitely got some in my eyes, which hurts!) and we made it through some last couple hills to a bike shop in Madison called Guy's Bicycle Shop. We grabbed a new tire to replace the one we punctured yesterday, and chatted with the very nice people who were in the store. They gave us a recommendation for dinner and we took off for our last hour or so of riding.
We arrived in the town of Bridgewater where our place for the night, the Lake Chalet Campground, is located. After taking off some of our soaked clothing, we set up our tent under their pavilion, which was thankfully completely dry. We had to be creative with the way we staked down the tent since it was a cement floor.
After the owner of the campground gave us a quick ride into town in their car, we grabbed dinner at a place called Patti's Pub.
Dave and Don played some games in the bar, and we got a great amount of food before we walked back to the campground in the now-dry weather. Heading to sleep now with hopes for an early start tomorrow so we can reach Massachusetts by tomorrow night!
