On a clear evening, Oswego claims the best sunsets on the Great Lakes, and nobody who has seen the sun sink into Lake Ontario from the breakwater is inclined to argue. The city sits where the Oswego River meets the lake, a working port of about eighteen thousand people with grain silos, a harbour and an old stone lighthouse, and the water stretches to a horizon as flat and wide as the sea. The lake is so big that waves can reach a couple of metres in a storm, and it never quite warms up.
Fort Ontario, a star-shaped fortress on a bluff above the harbour, has guarded the river mouth since the 1750s, and it changed hands between the French, British and Americans in a succession of wars. In 1814 the British attacked and took it briefly in the War of 1812. A less likely chapter came in 1944, when the fort became the only refuge in the United States for European Jewish refugees brought out of war-torn Italy, nearly a thousand of them, who lived behind its fences until the end of the war. The fort is now a museum and state historic site.
Snow is the other local legend. Cold winter air blowing across the warm lake picks up moisture and dumps it on the shore, and Oswego County gets some of the heaviest snowfalls in the country, sometimes more than a metre in a day. The summer riding season is correspondingly precious. The Seaway Trail runs along the lake here, with flat or gently rolling roads, apple orchards, farm stands and glimpses of the water, and the surface is mostly good. Wind can be strong, and fog can roll in off the lake in spring.
Fuel, food and rooms are available in Oswego, and Minetto, a small place to the south, has a few more services. Fresh lake fish, especially smoked salmon and perch, is the speciality, and a plate of fried fish at a harbourside cafe is a good lunch. The ride finishes or pauses here, and a stroll on the harbour breakwater at sunset is the right way to end the day.
Come between late May and early October. The light in September, when the maples start to turn and the lake is calm, is especially fine.