As the photos below will attest, the rushing water in rivers and creeks along the road today were quite beautiful, but I was about to learn first-hand the toll taken by the flash flooding conditions in recent weeks. My route today was to have taken me 38 miles from North Hudson, NY to Long Lake, NY, but after riding 27 miles, Trudi and I discovered that the remote road I was on was closed ahead because a bridge was out, and it was not due to be restored until Friday. My options were as follows: (1) wait somewhere until Friday in the hope that the bridge would indeed be restored by then; (2) take an 80-mile detour by bike to the nearest bridge that would get me back to my route; or (3) pack my bike into Trudi’s rental car and drive the 80-mile detour to the next stop in Long Lake.

Riding my bike on an 80-mile detour through some hilly terrain in the Adirondacks would add another day or two to the trip and present some lodging challenges that would probably require me to pitch a tent in some unconventional places along the way. Waiting until Friday, or perhaps later, for a bridge repair was also not an attractive option. I decided to take the car transportation alternative. Yes, this would technically lop off 17 miles of road before and after the bridge outage from my cross-country route. A purist might say this would mean I didn’t really ride my bike across the country, assuming I make it to the Pacific coast. To satisfy them, and my own nagging conscience, perhaps someday I’ll come back to ride this 17-mile stretch and the repaired bridge to complete my original route.

The water in these photos looks pretty tame, but in recent weeks streams like these were the conduits for a lot of water in a very short period of time.

I hadn’t expected to see a buffalo ranch here in the Adirondacks, but I came across one on a remote stretch of the road heading west from North Hudson this morning. In one of the photos below, you can see there are about a dozen or so bison penned in the back.

The first 10 miles of my ride were mostly uphill along the Blue Ridge Road, but there was almost no traffic, and on the whole, it was a very pleasant ride. Like yesterday, there were no places to stop for food or beverages, but fortunately, I brought along the world’s most-perfect food, the peanut butter cheese cracker, for my lunch. I enjoyed a package of these in Trudi’s rental car as we strategized about how to deal with the bridge outage.

In the town of Newcomb, population 436, I stopped at the Cloudsplitter Outfitters, where Travis helped me get my tire pressure back up to 90 lbs. psi. Cloudsplitter Outfitters is stationed on the Hudson River, and Newcomb is identified as the source of the river, which begins at Lake Tear of the Clouds north of Newcomb, 1,000 feet below the summit of Mount Marcy, the highest point in the State of New York (5,343 feet).

Here is Travis just outside the Outfitter.

And here is the Hudson River at its source.

Travis told me a story about a guy from New York City who followed the path of the Hudson River by bike from Yonkers in NYC up to the source in Newcomb, then made a loop by water in the headwaters before kayaking back down to the city. “Wow,” I said, “did he do this all by himself?” “No,” Travis said, “he was followed by a film crew.”

One really quite wonderful silver lining for this bridge outage is that with her arrival yesterday, Trudi was nearby to help me figure out what to do and to provide car transportation to the other side of the bridge. We were able to enjoy a nice late (second) lunch at the Lake Harris Lodge in Newcomb. Yes, it was a bit better than peanut butter cheese crackers, but those are certainly quite good when you need them.

Trudi had some trouble finding a place to help resupply our sources of hydration along the way–this area of the Adirondacks is quite devoid of the trappings of civilization. She finally was able to get some lemonade, iced tea, and root beer at a biker bar, Sporty’s Iron Duke Saloon. Sporty’s only accepts cash, and when Trudi didn’t have enough to pay for the drinks and their cash machine at the bar wasn’t working, they sold her what she had picked out for about a $5 discount, which we repaid on our trip back through the area on our detour. Sporty’s has apparently been around for about 20 years and is filled with the kind of memorabilia you might expect in a biker bar, as you can see in the photos below.

We arrived at the Longview Lodge in Long Lake, by car, at about 6:30 p.m., not exactly in the way we expected to arrive as the day began, but we’re dealing with unforeseen events as they come, and the trip goes on.