Day 7, Evangola SP, NY to Erie, PA, 74 miles.  Lots of animal activity around the park last night, so not as much of a good night's sleep as I would have liked.  First, a skunk was around somewhere, but not sure where (but it was obviously nearby...).  Second, the racoons made messes out of some neighbor's trash that was left out, and tried really hard to get into the Grub Pack stainless steel mesh bag I have.  They didn't get in, but you could tell they worked really, really hard and they did manage to stretch a little of the mesh out.  So, the bag works, although it would be better to have been hung :-).

 

 

Today was cooler, and pretty windy.  Some long slogs were ridden, against the wind at least part of the way.  Highway 5 is an official NY bike route and has a nice wide shoulder that is reasonably clean.  Quite a bit of up and down but no really big hills.  We had a Dunkin Donuts breakfast, where they had outlets by some of the tables, with USB power available on them, and free wifi.

Stopped at the lighthouse and museum in Dunkirk, right across from the NRG coal-fired generation plant.  Always interesting, although we did not take paid tour this time.

Around 1:00 we stopped at Vinewood Acres Sugar Shack which was quite a bit more interesting than many of the gift shops you might see.  This is mainly due to the proprietor's personal story of being an abused woman and rising back above all that.  She has a book, in addition to the many flavors of fruit syrup from locally-grown fruits and berries.  She gave us samples of about 10 of them, with ice cream to help us know how they go with that.

Lunch was at the Barcelona restaurant in the town of the same name, shortly beyond the gift shop, and recommended by them.  Sandwich and soup hit the spot.  Good thing we ate because it was yet another long slog into the wind after lunch.  We passed a sign that said "Erie 15 miles", in NY, and then a few miles later, in PA, we passed another sign that said "Erie 15 miles".  The last one was correct...

The road we took, Lake Shore Road, had a good shoulder most of the time.  There were lots of hills, although none of them were a real challenge -- just took a long time to get up, even after the downhill head start.

We stopped at a very nice public library in Erie and chatted with a young man, Jordan, that had gone around Lake Erie on his bike this Summer already.  He gave us some good directions to get the rest of the way to our campground ("Sara's").  We missed the turn for that and went a couple of miles out of our way.  Once we got there we discovered that their regular camping spots were all sold out.  They have beach camping, which is interesting, so we had to take that.  Apparently due to the windy conditions a lot of people moved from beach camping to regular campsites.  We would not have chosen that since we didn't really want to drag our bikes out to the beach but that's what we did (instead of go find another campground!).  The tent stakes don't have as much to hold on to but seem to work.

There are a number of places to eat right at the campground location and we picked a pizza place that was recommended by the campground guy.  We used the wifi there, of course, and enjoyed our meal.

Watched the sunset over the lake from the beach, and now we're gonna turn in, maybe after a shower.  On to Ohio tomorrow!