Redfield,New York

On day 10 of the trip we arose to the best looking morning so far. The very high winds of the previous day and night had finally subsided. The sky was clear and bright and the temperature was in the high 40s. We had a light tailwind and breakfast at Otto’s Diner was about 3 miles from camp. And Brian had a screw loose.

Actually Brian had lost the screw holding his eye glasses together. He fixed it by using a needle and tread from the sewing kit and a bit of duct tape (“If the women don’t find you handsome, at least they can find you handy”...Red Green). The broken glasses forced us to look for a drug store to buy a repair kit.

We found both in the town of Pulaski. The locals pronounce this as pull-ass-sky. We think that the way we pronounced the town name was how the locals figured out that we weren’t from around there.

The route for today would take us from Fair Haven, along the southeast corner of Lake Ontario to Port Ontario. From Port Ontario we headed inland toward the Adirondacks. This is where we started to notice that we were climbing. The elevation at Port Ontario was about 250 feet. By the time we got to Redfield, approximately 20 miles later, it was 1100 feet.

Our goal for the day was Redfield,NY, about 50 miles of riding. There would be limited opportunities to camp in this section of the route. Our Adventure Cycling map said that there would be a motel at Redfield. The map also said that there was a bed and breakfast at Redfield, but for some reason we ignored virtually all information about B&Bs.

The motel at Redfield was closed because the owners were on vacation. Because we were ignoring B&Bs, it looked like the next opportunity to camp was about 15 miles down the road. We felt that luck was with us and started to push on. On the east side of Redfield we found the CrossRoads Inn and Cabins (the B&B that we had ignored). This is a beautiful old building on a hill next to the river. We decided to see if anything was available.See Crossroads Inn

We went in the door marked office and found ourselves in Mitch and Tanya Yerdon’s kitchen. They were eating dinner with their family. They immediately assured us that we had not entered the wrong door and that people walk into the kitchen all of the time. It was Sunday night and they had been full all weekend, so the only thing available was “mom’s” cabin.

Mom’s cabin was an older building near the barn. It was decorated like your grandma’s house. It even had doilies on some of the furniture. The place was spotlessly clean and had two beds and a shower. What else could we want? When we asked about a laundromat, Tanya offered to throw a load of our clothes in the washer. We were offered the use of the kayaks in the barn.

We were given a tour of the house which started life as a hunting lodge for some very wealthy New Yorkers at the turn of the twentieth century. The Yerdon’s have been restoring the lodge and have built new cabins on the property. (Mom’s cabin is where Tanya’s mother stays when she visits from Idaho, which sort of explained why there was a framed state map of Idaho on the wall.

Our luck was still holding.

Wes