Monday July 15:  Erie, Pennsylvania to Buffalo, New York
Distance:  95.4 miles
Total time:  8 hours 8 minutes
Riding time:  6 hours 41 minutes

Today was a glorious day of cycling.  We spent the whole day riding east and northeast along Lake Erie.  The temperature was in the low 70s and there were times, especially early in the day, when I felt chilled.  That's a good thing in mid-July.  Okay, sometimes the road surface was absolute crap - fire Governor Cuomo - but there wasn't much else to complain about.  We had a tailwind for long stretches and sometimes found ourselves scooting along at 18 miles an hour uphill.  That's cycling.

The city of Erie gets a bad rap, and maybe it deserves it, but we rode through downtown and it was kind of magnificent.  Lots of those stately 19th century public buildings - city halls and libraries - that we did so well in those days.  And large neighborhoods of what could only be called mansions.  Erie clearly had its day.

We saw much more of the lake today than we did yesterday, and it was beautiful.  Maybe it's my sunglasses, but the water had an aquamarine hue that I didn't expect.  It looked like this.

And the shoreline was dotted with more vineyards, like this one.

Upon close examination, I was able to determine that the crop looks very promising this year - a vintage year without a doubt - but it isn't yet ready for the harvest.

At 23 miles we left Pennsylvania behind us and entered New York, our home for the next six nights.  While an improvement over the "Welcome to Pennsylvania" sign that so offended me yesterday, I'd say the Empire State could up its game as well.  Come on, brag about your favorite sons and daughters, maybe Alexander Hamilton or Susan B. Anthony.  Something, um, Trumpian for goodness sake.  Something huuuge.  Here's my inexpert selfie and part of the sign.

Here's a more official Welcome to New York photo.

And here's the traditional Three Amigos shot.

We only had one SAG stop on today's 95 mile ride, so we had to seek calories on the road.  We found the Barcelona Cafe in Barcelona, New York.  Not much that brought to mind the city in Catalonia.  No Holy Family Cathedral.  Not even a Leonel Messi poster on the wall.  But the breakfast sandwich was tip-top and we had a good time talking to some locals.  Some older women ... well, women our age ... told us that their church group puts up cross-country cyclists for free.  Good to know for next time.  Here we are enjoying the local delicacies.

Meanwhile, our bicycles rested outside in the shade.

The New York shores of Lake Erie were just as pretty as the Pennsylvania shores.  We saw many lighthouses - presumably the southern shore of the lake is treacherous - like this one.

We briefly passed through a portion of the Seneca Nation.  The Seneca were one of the famous "Seven Civilized Tribes".  It appeared that many of the businesses on their land were Indian-owned (they use the term Indian) which was good to see.

I bragged in a previous posting that we'd covered thousands of miles and crossed hundreds of train tracks, but had only been stopped once by a train.  Well, we got stopped for a second time today as we neared Buffalo.  One of the restraining gates kept going up and down, which you can see to the left in the picture below.  The locomotive is to the right and is about to cross in front of us.

But the best part of the day was the visit from our daughter Maureen on her birthday.  She was in Toronto visiting friends and took the two-hour bus ride to Buffalo to visit.  We'll go see Niagara Falls tomorrow on our rest day.  Happy birthday to Maureen and her twin brother Liam.

So that's the end of the fifth stage of the journey.  Looking back I think this was tougher than the Rockies, though we're all in better shape.  But we averaged 97 miles over the past five days with a lot of hills.  After the rest day we begin the seven day run to the Atlantic Ocean, less than 600 miles away.  I can almost taste the lobstah roll.