THE HILLS OF ROUTE 89

Joan's View

Breakfast at the Gridley Inn was yummy. We got started a little later because we were chatting with the owners and other guests of the bed and breakfast.

The route was a backroad zigzag shortcut to Route 89 which runs along beautiful Lake Cayuga.

 The views were great, and the sites along the way were fun too. Tom Thornton texted Tony to tell us to look out for eagles perched on telephone poles, and we found one! We also had a huge selection of wineries to pick from. We stopped first at a roadside vendor area though and Tony found some beer tasting before we visited our 1st winery. I got a souvenir necklace from one of the local vendors there while he taste tested on the cool adirondack chairs with attached tables.

Our next stop was to refuel and, yes, they had ice cream. In fact, this place was ranked by USA Today as the best ice cream in New York. We got other food too though. 

The next pit stop was the Hosmer Winery.  We had to wait for the owner to go home to get his camera so that he could take some pictures of our bike. Another fun discussion with another fascinated bicycle enthusiast.

The pictures show Tony doing some wine tasting and then doing his selecting. He picked 2 bottles which added to our load. The hills were getting much bigger at this point, but it was important to keep Tony happy though because we had lots of peddling still ahead of us.

This leads us to our next pit stop -cherries! Who knew that this little railroad crossing place would be such a sweet stop! Again, our bags were getting a little heavier.

Our final pit stop before heading to the hotel was Taughannock Falls, the highest falls in the state, even higher than Niagara. We did another first, a "hike the bike" to get to the actual falls. Tony pushed the bike about 3/4 mile each ways on the trail. The falls were, of course, beautiful. 

Similarly, we had a gathering of people asking questions and inspecting our mode of transportation.























We saw many waterfalls along the road. Closer to Ithaca, we picked up a bike trail for a stretch. We stopped on a bridge just to snap a picture of some falls off of the trail. Reaching Ithaca, we were later than usual checking into our hotel, and a little more tired than usual as well. Regardless, Tony did a great job getting us up those hills!!!!!

Tony's Extra

We had a great day and it took us about 8 hours to go 50 miles. As Joan stated, we talked to the other guest at the B&B. The one couple had a business of selling Mac Tools and we started talking Value Propositions, of which they have a lot of potential. Then I started to realize, I was getting excited about Value Proposition like Tony Collins. Oh no, I think that is bad?

Well on to the ride, after the beer tasting, Joan showed her courage. We headed down a hill right away and we were going 44 miles per hour. I pretty sure she didn't know, so don't tell her. Funny thing is that just down the road I did some wine tasting. Then we got back on the road and went 45 mph and I had to keep the brakes on to keep us from going faster. Since we had all these good hills going down we had tough ones going up. I was glad I was with Joan instead of my sister, Nancy. Actually one of the tough hills when I was really sucking wind, Joan was too.

Looking forward to our day off tomorrow.