Written by Dave

Day 75 – August 11 – 69 Miles,  2,400 feet climbing (Arrowhead RV Park, Glenville to Whitehall, NY)

It was nice and quiet in the Arrowhead RV Park overnight. There is a lot of noise in the Mohawk River Valley during the day but the frequent trains and freeway traffic died down overnight. Either that or we were all pretty tired and that lead us to sleeping well. Several of our neighbours in RVs came back from nights on the town after we had retired but we didn’t hear much of them either.

We were up before sunrise and packed our gear for an exciting brekkie adventure at the nearby Dunkin Donuts. We haven’t been to a Dunkin in years but stopped there on the way in yesterday afternoon to check it out. It turns out that just about every fast food chain in America now serves some sort of egg & bacon brekkie sandwich. They are easy to make and hard to trademark, so long as you don’t try to sell your sandwich as an egg McMuffin. We’d heard rumors Dunkin coffee was pretty good. For the record, it is not great, but will do in a pinch. Oh well, the brekkie sandwiches were pretty tasty – on sourdough toast for a nice change.

The Arrowhead park is on the northern edge of Schenectady, or so we thought. It took us a good hour plus to finally break free of what seemed like an endless stream classic New England homes with their nice 1 acre plus perfectly mowed front lawns. Traffic was light, which makes sense when you consider how limited the housing density is, and of course as it was Sunday.

Everyone was pretty quiet this morning. We had close to 70 miles to ride and some climbing. I tried to cheer folks up by noting that “Windy”, the wind app, said that we’d have tailwinds in the afternoon. It was all still pretty quiet until Ballston Spa when Nancy and I had to shout out to Chris, he was on the front and missed a turn. No harm done as Ballston Spa had some nice looking old buildings and I was able to snap a few photos of old town New England.

We had morning tea at a servo, somewhere. Honestly, most of today blurred together a bit. It was handy that we picked up to-go muffins at Dunkins this morning as the servo had limited offerings. We took lunch in Fort Edward. We stopped there to see if our campground restaurant was serving today or to buy groceries if they weren’t. We were able to confirm that dinner is being served, though the looking at camp later this arvo, the jury is out on if we made the right choice. Our camp is not fancy.

After lunch we had a breezy 24 miles ride to reach Whitehall and the Whitehall Marina and RV Park. Nancy took the front, as she had pretty much all day, and drove us pretty quickly to the finish. I dare not stop for photos when Nancy is on the front and in this mode. If I do, she makes me work really hard to catch back up. To be clear, she isn’t looking in her mirror and thinking, “I can make Dave work hard”. Its more that she is in smell the barn mode and there’s no slowing her, no matter how scenic the visit. Today Chris and I hung on for dear life.

When we reached Whitehall I took a detour to get some photos. Main street is one street off the highway and definitely worth a side trip if you are passing through – lots of nice old buildings in pretty good shape. Sadly, not too many businesses occupy the buildings but they look nice.

Whitehall seems sleepy but it has good access to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence Waterway. The location led Whitehall to be becoming the birthplace of the United States Navy. Benedict Arnold, the first commander of the navy, built a fleet of 16 small ships in Whitehall, back in 1776. He had hopes of stopping the British from invading American territory. The fleet included a sloop, two schooners, four row galleys, eight or nine 54-foot bungalows, and a cutter. Arnold is credited with designing and specifying some of the ships. The boats were used in the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War. The American ships lost but ultimately delayed the British advance and won a strategic victory.

Tomorrow we won’t get to see much of the Lake Champlain as we turn eastward, leaving NY and moving on to Vermont. We have about half a day to find a NY license plate. Our next two days are a couple of the biggest climbing days of the trip. It’s a good thing we’ve had all the training to reach this point, 4073 miles to date by my counting.

We’re off now to see about that campground diner. There are currently zero customers – it’s early but it’s looking a little spooky right now…