The name of this town is pronounced with a “c” as in “circus”. It took 20 miles but I found a clerk who clarified that is the first “c”.

This morning I met Ron and Tina who were checking out of the adjacent room. Their blog for their bicycle journey is www.2greenbikes.com

I made today an easy ride. This section of the Empire Trail has some intermittent sections on roads and the rest is mostly gravel. I decided to stay on the road for the entire distance. This was marked as Bicycle Route 5 and mostly had good shoulders and not very much traffic. As I go further west (now west of my DC starting point today), sunrise drifts just a few minutes later – now 5:35am – and I still try to be on the road by 6:30am ish to take advantage of cool temperatures and not much traffic.

This mural depicted Roosevelt’s four freedoms.

Town square in Port Byron. Taking the road brought me through all these little towns.

Bridge past the paradise of mosquitoes.

Leaving Clyde, one of the small villages. I haven’t yet figured out what causes a municipality to list themselves as a village vs. a town. As best I can tell, the smallest ones call themselves towns to seem larger and the larger ones call themselves villages to seem smaller …

Fortunately the detour was not far out of the way.

Lock #28 on the Erie canal. Here and most of the last 20 miles I cycled the road on the left side of the canal and the trail went along the right side of the canal.

The village of Palmyra has one distinct feature you can sort of see in this photo of the main intersection (2nd traffic light).

On the corners on the left side of the street are two churches.

On the corners on the right side of the street are two more churches. Palmyra claims four churches on the main intersection as a distinct feature.

I was early enough that I stopped for lunch in a diner along the way and then still made an early checkin to the motel. That is good since it was getting to upper 80Fs and it meant most of my cycling was in cooler temperatures.

Strava says: 49.19 miles in 4:56:48 or 9.9 miles/hour. 1099 feet climbed and 3496 calories burned. One difference on hills today is they were all very gradual, a longer rise or fall of 1-3% rather than short 5-7% hill. That also made it easier.