CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
National Scenic Byway. Great Lakes, Niagara, historic ports. From Erie it runs 552 km to Kingston; allow about 7 h 53 of riding. It goes by way of Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Rochester and Oswego. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 27 km this is Seaway Trail, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Erie is Pennsylvania's only port on the Great Lakes, a solid working city on the south shore of Lake Erie with a long industrial history and a waterfront that has been reinvented for visitors. It is the western starting point for the Seaway Trail, a scenic route that follows the shores of Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River across western New York.
Read the complete Erie write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seaway Trail point 1 sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Seaway Trail point 2.
Buffalo sits at the east end of Lake Erie, where the lake narrows into the Niagara River, and its position has shaped everything about it. The Erie Canal ended here when it opened in 1825, linking the Great Lakes to the Hudson and New York, and the city became a great grain port, its waterfront crowded with huge concrete elevators, many of which still stand. At one point in the early twentieth century it was among the richest cities in America, and the legacy is still visible in its architecture, from the art deco city hall to the Frank Lloyd Wright houses.
Read the complete Buffalo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seaway Trail point 2 comes up 89 km in. Next is Seaway Trail point 3.
Few places announce themselves as loudly as Niagara. Before you see the falls, you hear them, and then a column of mist rises over the trees, and then the river drops away in front of you, a mass of green water plunging fifty metres into a boiling gorge. The Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side take the bulk of the flow, while the American Falls and the narrow Bridal Veil are on the New York side, and the whole thing is the product of one of the biggest drainage systems on earth, the Great Lakes, emptying through a single river.
Read the complete Niagara Falls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
178 km in you reach Seaway Trail point 3. Next is Seaway Trail point 4.
Seaway Trail point 4, about halfway. Next is Seaway Trail point 5.
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.
Read the complete Oswego write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seaway Trail point 5 sits at 355 km, late in the day. Next is Seaway Trail point 6.
At Cape Vincent, Lake Ontario ends and the St. Lawrence River begins. The Tibbetts Point Lighthouse, standing at the tip of the cape, marks the spot, and from the rocks below it you can watch the lake narrow into the great river that flows northeast toward the Atlantic. Across the water lies Wolfe Island, the largest of the Thousand Islands, and beyond it the city of Kingston in Canada.
Read the complete Seaway Trail point 6 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seaway Trail point 6 comes up 552 km in.