Day 33 and 34, 8/26-27 Schuylerville, NY to Manchester Center, VT, and a soft rest day.

For those who do not know, a "soft" rest day is an unscheduled rest day. If either of us wants a rest day,  for any reason, a rest day happens. More later.

Today's map.  https://ridewithgps.com/routes/16126623

The day began in a drizzle, not a bad thing, and we were only riding 38 miles today. We turned left in town to get onto NY 29, and crossed the Hudson River.


The river is a lot narrower this far north.                                                   

That is when the road turned upwards, just one mile after we started.



Ride with GPS says this is a 9.9% climb. We had to walk the last third. We talked about stopping and restarting on the hill, but did not want to spend all our legs on this first climb.

Well, we figured we were going to have to climb out of the Hudson Valley, and once we were up that hill, the road leveled out, following the Batten Kill River for a while. Pretty ride.




We turned off NY 29 onto County 61 at about mile 10, and a little over a mile later, we were confronted with the killer climb of the day. It was over a mile long. Margaret has a grade sensing app on her phone. It said the grade was over 14%. Imagine walking your bike up a hill, and having to stop and rest several times during the climb. We did.


Looking back on first part of the climb.


The car way down below is just starting to descend the first part of the climb.


Kind of pretty all the way up here.

At any rate, we are now in the mountains. We rode some very nice roads today, NY/VT 313 was particularly nice. We also had our first flat, and on the trailer no less. We repaired it on the NY-VT state line. There was no "Welcome to NY" sign when we crossed into NY state in Niagara Falls, so Margaret figured she'd get a picture of one when we left the state.


Mountains.


NY 313.


Little wheel.





Lots of covered bridges in New England.



This one came with instructions.



Our last eleven miles today were on VT 7A. Yes, more 6 and 7 and 8% grades. We rode into the parking lot of our motel, and were greeted by the manager who was watching his nieces in the pool. As we were checking in, he volunteered that our room would be open the next night. Just in case we wanted to stay. We looked like, and felt like, dog meat. We are taking a rest day.