James's Road to Roam: September 2026

The Parks and Trails New York (PTNY) group is an advocacy group that supports a number of parks and public spaces throughout the state of New York and their "Cycle the Erie" ride is an annual bike ride that follows the Erie Canal from Buffalo to Albany and covers approximately 400 miles.

You may know that the Erie Canal was built to help facilitate the movement of goods and people and was a 'replacement' for the laborious wagon trains that used to traverse northern New York and was essentially replaced by the train system once it was built. It's 'glory years' did not last long but the State of New York and the communities around the canal have done a great job keeping it alive and it still serves as a community benefit for the whole upstate region.

We began the ride in Buffalo and proceeded east on the canal bank on a fairly smooth, paved path that would change to crushed stone every now and then. Both surfaces were easy to ride on and the entire path is fairly flat for the whole distance with rare exceptions. Most of the ride was spent on one bank or the other of the canal with the exception of when we would go into towns for sightseeing or at the end of the day to get to the campsites. As with most rides of this nature we generally camped at schools and the organizer would provide shower trucks and dinner & breakfasts, which were the best of any ride I've been on. Each day was a different menu at dinner and somewhat different at breakfast. The same goes for the rest stops, PTNY did a great job with stocking them with a wide variety of snacks and fruits (including watermelon from Pageland, SC of all places). On occasion the route would take us far off the route so that we could overnight in a larger town or avoid a particularly difficult town or area to navigate through on a bike. During one of those segments it was quite difficult as we were out of the shade of the trees along the canals and had a number of difficult hills to climb, which was shocking since the route along the canal is very, very flat! The reward for these hot hills was that a Mennonite family had setup an ice cream stand with homemade ice cream stand with their 'hit and miss' engine powered ice cream churn...very tasty! Each day during the rides we were treated to views of the locks and other related machinery for the canal, usually one or two historical displays and a few museums, including at peppermint museum celebrating the history of the peppermint business in that town. One of the museums had a pretty cool boat ride up a side canal and another had a boat ride that went up and back through a working lock, which was a big thrill! At the end of the ride the PTNY also set up a talent show of sorts where individuals and groups, including a group of younger riders, performed songs and skits related to their experiences during the week - quite fun and Catskill like"

All in all, the ride was very enjoyable and very well run & supported. If you ever think you'd like to go on a cross state ride, this is one of the easiest as it is mostly along the flat canal route AND the staff goes out of their way to make sure you are enjoying yourself and that you have everything you need to succeed! Each and every town we passed through was fun and unique in their own way, and they all were very welcoming. I was very impressed with the cleanliness and how well they were kept up.