TLWH - Day 6 - One big surprise
The Day 6 plan takes us from Greenfield, Massachusetts to New Paltz, New York:
When we pulled into Greenfield last night, I really figured our days of really cool back roads and trails were over. Greenfield is a nice town but it's really big compared to the towns that we have gotten used to. In my mind, there was no way that any remote back country could exist between here and New York. That's where the surprise comes in: As we left the hotel we rode maybe a mile and took a right turn up the hillside to run into this:
It felt like we had just been dropped into another place on the earth. The noises of the city were gone and all we could hear was birds, wind, and water... until we fired up the bikes! :)
I stopped right away to take some pictures because I was really expecting it to be over quickly but it just kept going. More farms, miles of woods with no one around, streams, and lakes. We had this for over 100 miles today! Some of you are thinking "didn't he put together these tracks and why wouldn't he know?" answer: I forgot
At times, the road gets smaller and less traveled. We always take the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. (don't quote me on that) This is an example:
As we were riding we would come accross little towns that usually consisted of a church, some city building, and maybe a house or two. At lunch we found a town called Becket. This is a page out of The Andy Griffith Show. We had lunch at a cafe but everyone that came in knew everyone else there. They would all check in with each other and then go on with their day... Don't they know there is a huge city just an hour away where no one does this stuff? strange but very cool!
Old Stuff: We have frequently come across really neat old stuff. This old truck was just too cool to pass up without a photo:
and I bet this old house was quite spectacular in it's day. I bet it has some stories to tell:
And I've always been fascinated by these old stone walls. I'm sure that many of these were put here by the original settlers to this area. It's funny to think that the original farmer who was just stacking rocks around his field would decide where the road would go that we were riding on today.
OK. One more thing, then I'll let you go. Remember how I said that Hank loves heavy machinery? We passed a quarry and Hank had to get a closer look but the crew working the site would have nothing to do with us so we went down the road a bit and snuck through the barb wire to get a closer look. It was pretty amazing. That's a jumbo size excavator down there and it looks like a toy. It was loading those dump trucks that are the size of a two story building - you can barely see one on 5th level.
Tomorrow is a shorter day so we have some time to service the bikes. We will be winding our way through the Catskills and just across the border into New Jersey.
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