Summer Trip 2023 Day 26

11 July 2023

This is the second-to-last day of the trip and it was another short one, just 199 miles from Jamestown to Ithaca.

I started out on secondary roads but once I started seeing deer alongside the road I decided it might be good to get onto I-86 until getting off on US-13 to Ithaca.

Western and Central New York State is beautiful with hills that are a bit beyond just being called “rolling” – they’re almost like the roller-coaster hills in parts of Ohio but with much longer ups and downs. Trust me, this is much steeper than it looks!

Coming into Ithaca from the southwest, I lost 600 feet of elevation in about 2 miles – that’s a good grade and there were great views that I wasn’t able to get photos of.

Even more surprising, I gained back 500 feet of elevation in the 4 miles from downtown Ithaca to my hotel that’s near the airport, most of that in probably less than 2 miles. I’m somewhere on the bluffs overlooking Lake Cayuga tonight although I can’t see the lake from where I am.

Tomorrow’s route is yet to be decided but I’m going to try to avoid the highways I’ve traveled far too often. Tomorrow’s update may also be delayed a day; I probably won’t do it until Thursday morning.