Even the slightest rain can sound thunderous inside a tent—and this was not slight rain. It came down in buckets, just as my partner Maggie and I were settling into our sleeping bags. I worried whether the barely-two-person tent would withstand a deluge like this and what the protocol was should lightning strike. And then lightning struck.
We talked about what to do. Maggie pulled up some information on her phone and was soon crouching on one foot, to avoid creating a circuit, she said with confidence. She counted the seconds between each flash and rumble out loud to gauge the storm’s proximity to us. I was mostly thinking of just how scant our escape options were. Our only way out was our drenched bicycles, resting against a soggy pine tree outside the tent. We took turns proposing different plans: spend the night in the campsite bathrooms, ride to the nearest motel, call the cops. We settled on hoping for the best. I fell asleep amid spiraling thoughts of dread: first night in, and this bike trip was already feeling like a mistake.
I woke up to the sound of birdsong and gentle raindrops, one beckoning me out of my sleeping bag, the other making a convincing argument to burrow deeper into it. But multiday bike touring, I would come to learn by the end of a 10-day journey across New York State’s Empire State Trail, is all about convincing yourself to do things you might not feel like doing—ride another dozen miles to the next town because it’s either that or a soulless highway motel, eat yet another granola bar because you didn’t plan lunch properly, wake up early to beat the hottest hours of the day—only to be thankful, eventually, that you did them.
Under a canopy of drizzle, Maggie and I emerged from our tent and went about a set of tasks that would soon become routine: We boiled water on our tiny camp stove for coffee and tea, broke down our sopping tent, repacked our panniers, and triple-checked that we left nothing behind. We were exhausted—a bad sign considering this was Day Two. But it was understandable, given how much we’d already experienced.
Starting in Buffalo, we’d decided to take a 65-mile pre-trip detour, cycling to Niagara Falls before looping back to start our real journey on the Empire State Trail that would take us all the way to New York City. We had already ridden through verdant farmland and industrial blight, had meandering conversations with strangers, and contended with the elements. A douchebag in a cheap sports car had almost run us off the road, but a bike shop mechanic at Campus WheelWorks in Buffalo had fixed my moody mechanical disc brakes on our way out of town and refused payment after he saw our panniers. We were the third bike tourers who had come through that week, he told us, but the first to have chosen to go west—to the falls—before heading east. He seemed to like that.
The morning after the storm, we caught our first glimpse of the Erie Canalway Trail, the western section of the Empire State Trail, which runs 360 miles from the shores of Lake Erie in Buffalo to the Hudson River in Albany. As far as we could see, we were the only people on this section. A finely ground gravel path, compacted by the rain, ran along the canal’s edge, straight and flat. A blanket of fog cloaked the waterway in an eerie silence. We stopped for a minute to take it in. Amid the quiet, I struggled to imagine the canal as the artery of industry it once had been. It was a long way yet to New York City.
On December 31, 2020, New York’s then-governor Andrew Cuomo announced the completion of the Empire State Trail, a 750-mile bike route, 75 percent of which is on car-free paths. The trail runs from Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan, up through the Hudson Valley and the Adirondacks to the border with Canada. Another section runs from Albany, all along the Erie Canal, to Buffalo. In all, it’s the largest multiuse trail network in the country.
While most sections existed before the establishment of the Empire State Trail, it took roughly four years—and about $200 million—to link them into a continuous network, a process that involved stakeholders ranging from individual municipalities to community volunteer groups, to the state’s parks department. “[The Empire State Trail is] easily 50 percent of my job now,” says Christopher Morris, the statewide trails program planner for New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. The trail isn’t overseen by a single entity; rather, it’s a kind of amorphous commonwealth of invested parties, each looking after their own section in favor of this greater mission. A major part of Morris’s job involves getting the word out, he says. He often gets emails from would-be travelers, from both the U.S. and abroad, looking for tips on how to navigate the trail. “When you really see this kind of investment make a difference, it’s rewarding,” he says. “It makes you feel good about your job.”
It’s understandable if you missed this bit of nerdy infrastructure news when the trail system opened. December 2020 was, up until that point, the deadliest month of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Over the preceding eight months, I’d holed away in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, overwhelmed by a sense that the world I’d known and loved had ended. I’d spent the entirety of the previous year hopping week by week from destination to destination as The 52 Places Traveler for the New York Times, so the abrupt transition to total stasis left me feeling helpless—not to mention jobless. I welcomed the Empire State Trail news, which I heard about from hours of scrolling through Reddit looking for something—anything—to bring me out of my apartment and into the world again. Around four years earlier, I had splurged on a Trek CrossRip, a jack-of-all-trades, gravel-ish bike with an aluminum frame, after a lifetime of secondhand clunkers. Over time, I had made little upgrades—a Brooks saddle, handlebar tape that didn’t bleed dye onto my palms, bombproof Schwalbe tires to withstand New York City, where the streets are paved with glass. In the darkest days of the pandemic, that bike became my ticket out.
I rode whenever I could—through the empty streets of the city, the usual din of life being lived replaced by the constant wail of sirens; up and down the Hudson River Greenway on Manhattan’s West Side, itself part of the Empire State Trail. At around the same time I’d sprung for the Trek, Maggie had bought a Specialized Dolce, an aluminum all-rounder with rim brakes and what the company calls “Women’s Endurance Geometry.” She also fell in love with Brooks’s leather saddles and added in-line brake levers for extra safety. Together, we ventured farther afield. We followed the Empire State Trail up through the succession of rail trails in the Hudson Valley, veering off it to visit a friend in the Catskills. In the summer of 2021, I rented a car and drove my bike 275 miles up to Lake Champlain, where I explored the network’s most northerly sections through the Adirondacks, where the “trail” often is just a lane painted onto the side of a road—some of the 25 percent that isn’t car-free. I took locals’ advice to deviate from the main roads onto quieter country lanes, but I also found the rumble of logging trucks and tourist campervans whizzing by me oddly comforting, for it signaled a return to some kind of normalcy.
Spending so much time in transit for work has made home a moving target to me, often just out of reach and always out of focus. The bicycle, a tool invented to traverse distances efficiently, helped me see what was right in front of me.
In the early months of 2023, started to sketch out a trip I hoped would feel like a culmination of all my backyard wanderings around New York. Travel has always been a shortcut to adventure to me, and, because of that, I’ve often shorthanded adventure as requiring distance. I wondered if I could tap into the same thrills, all without ever stepping foot on a jet plane.
After a 10-hour train ride from New York City to Buffalo, I’d ride two main sections of the Empire State Trail—the west-to-east Erie Canal Trailway and the chain of rail trails and backroads running south from Albany back to my Harlem apartment—some 550 miles in all. Burdened by corporate vacation policies, Maggie decided she’d ride the Erie Canal section to Albany with me, then hop on the train home. In the months leading up to the trip, I pored over guides and online forums, of which there are many, building out a plan that involved a mix of camping and staying at bed-and-breakfasts in the towns along the way. Veterans of the trail warned of heavily trafficked sections of road around Kingston in the Hudson Valley and of the mosquitoes that swarmed the campsites at the various lock stations of the Erie Canal. Insiders cautioned against underestimating the coma-inducing qualities of a Rochester “garbage plate,” a bucketload of ground meat smothered in a fridge-tray’s worth of condiments. I took fastidious notes and drew up packing lists, weighing my panniers until I got to a weight I felt comfortable with. I plotted out days on the trail that would run us an average mileage of around 60, with a few “rest days” in the 30s baked in.
Seasoned bikepackers and bike tourers may find this all a little overdramatic. But having really only fallen hard for cycling in the last few years, I still don’t understand many things: a bike’s head-tube angle and trail; heart-rate zones and watts. But I do know travel. I know that so many of the clichés are true: that the best travel moments often appear out of the haze of the unexpected; that the journey can mean much more than the destination; that risk almost always reaps rewards; that who you travel with is often more important than where you go; that everywhere, no matter how seemingly mundane or obscure, has a little bit of magic waiting to reveal itself, if you just let it.
When it opened in 1825, the Erie Canal was the longest artificial waterway in North America and, in how it opened up the interior of the country to enterprising East Coasters, it was an embodiment of a pioneer mindset that saw a burgeoning country shape the land to its will and expand farther west. While it wouldn’t take long for the railway to replace canal barges as the go-to freight hauler, the political will and sheer toil that went into the canal’s construction would be a precursor to the hyper-capitalist nation emerging in the following centuries. “In time, this skinny ditch in upstate New York would demonstrate that trade and commerce are keys to the expansion of prosperity and freedom itself,” writes the historian Peter L. Bernstein in his 2005 history of the canal, The Wedding of the Waters.
Many of the settlements along the canal aren’t thriving like they were when this was a major thoroughfare of trade. Once tracing a path between vibrant industrial hubs, the waterway now closely mirrors the contours of the Rust Belt. Just as the grandeur of Victorian mansions points to what was, so do empty streets and faded “For Rent” signs on empty storefronts.
One such town, Brockport, is at least partially buoyed by the state university campus—or so I was told by Valerie Ciciotti, who runs Park Ave B&B in a painstakingly restored 1851 mansion that we stayed in. Graduation is the busiest time, she says, but bike tourists like us are becoming more common every summer. As we rolled out of Brockport the next morning, I wondered—not for the last time—whether a steady influx of tired, hungry cyclists could be enough to keep towns along the canal alive. (When I caught up with Ciciotti recently, she said the trail was already making a difference—the village government has become more directly involved with tourism, including designating Brockport an official Empire State Trail Town.)
We spent the next week on the Erie Canal in a kind of meditative rhythm that only comes from long trips, drifting in and out of conversations with each other, keeping count of kingfishers flitting along the water, and gasping when a heron swallowed a fish whole.
Outside Fairport, the skies turned black and dumped rain on us until we were laughing at the absurdity of trying to cycle through mud so dense it made our tires seize. Bystanders, wise enough to take shelter, cheered us on as we rode. We stopped under an awning and pried mud from our chains with our fingers. When the rain showed no sign of stopping, we just kept going—pulled along by the promise of a hot shower and a cold beer. We rode through sheets of rain until water poured out of our shoes. Once the deluge slowed, we tied wet clothes to our bikes. We looked like sailboats rolling down the trail.
One night, we camped at one of the locks along the trail, where boats are lifted to account for elevation changes in the ground. (Cyclists can camp at certain locks for free but are encouraged to call the lockkeeper ahead of time as a courtesy.) As the light faded and the mosquitoes emerged, I spoke to a pair of retirees on a boat who were following the same path as so many goods-bearing barges once did—from the Great Lakes to the Hudson and the sea. We woke up in the middle of the night to the infernal shrieks of nearby foxes. The following morning, we rode into Utica for breakfast at Golden’s diner, itself a throwback, where one man behind a counter flipped eggs and pointed to the self-service coffee station while bebop played from tinny speakers.
For our last night on the canal, we stayed in the Amsterdam Castle, which looms over the tiny town of Amsterdam like a tyrant’s keep. A bizarre manifestation of some sort of Arthurian fantasy, the hotel features suits of armor in the lobby and velvet bedding in the rooms. New York State truly contains multitudes.
I thought about all the many things I’d seen and done in my travels to far-flung places—witnessing a solar eclipse in Chile, kayaking alongside humpbacks in Antarctica, hiking through prehistoric rainforests in New Zealand. If novelty is what drives our travel decisions, it was rapidly becoming clear to me that I didn’t always need to fling myself halfway around the world to find it.
Because the Empire State Trail is mostly a consolidation of existing paths and an effort to fill the gaps between them—and because of the vast distances the network covers—the character of the trail changes the farther along it you ride. I noticed this as soon as I said goodbye to Maggie in Albany at the eastern terminus of the Erie Canal and turned south on the first of a number of rail trails that would take me back to New York City over the next three days. With the canal no longer a constant companion, I found myself instead passing through bucolic suburbs, open farmland, and, occasionally, dense sections of forest. Riding alone after days with someone else was an adjustment, too. I found, just a few hours after turning south, I was talking to myself—making observations about the lack of shade and the odd, ashy taste in my mouth from forest fire smoke drifting south from Canada. It made for tough riding—and I took much more frequent rest stops.
When planning my trip, I knew I’d pass through major regional hubs like Hudson and Kingston. But I also wanted to experience corners of the state I hadn’t seen before, and I chose my stops for the night with that in mind. That’s how I ended up veering a mile off the trail into the storybook village of Kinderhook. I checked into the luxurious Old Dutch Inn, a new hotel housed in a modernized 19th-century building with views of the village square. It had only just opened a few weeks prior. The co-owner, Jennifer Ose-MacDonald, showed no trepidation when she welcomed my mud-streaked, sweat-drenched self into her immaculate establishment, where snow-white linens hung from the windows. Knowing I was one of the first of what she hoped to be many bike-traveler guests, she asked me for advice on bike racks. I told her that though the exact model of bike rack wasn’t that important, alas, a lot of cyclists might not be as comfortable locking up their bikes outside overnight as I was. (Ose-MacDonald says she has since carved out space for indoor bike storage and has added a trove of tools for cycling guests.)
Ose-Macdonald’s partner, Jake Samascott, runs a much-visited orchard and farm shop in town but is also the president of the Columbia Friends of the Electric Trail, an organization of volunteers who maintain the section of trail that passes through Columbia County, mowing and trimming the greenery around the path. For years it was an unused, overgrown corridor through which power lines ran. More than a thoroughfare for bike tourists like me, the trail is a community asset, Samascott says. “I have three little girls who wanted to learn to ride bikes—I want them riding on a trail and not on the road.”
I saw how these paths build community throughout my trip but especially on the rail trails that run one into another through the Hudson Valley until they end in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Travelers like me were few and far between, but I passed dozens of families out on bikes, joggers with their dogs, even summer-school groups. Several, seeing my bags, and the level of grime on my face and body, would offer a thumbs-up or shout, “You’re almost there,” though they didn’t know where I was going.
New York State isn’t all smooth-rolling. Idyllic sections of tree-shaded gravel paths on rail trails are broken up by hilly roads and, at one point around Kingston, a traffic-snarled bridge. Unlike the Erie Canal section, campsites along the Albany-NYC axis of the trail are largely nonexistent, which means budgeting for hotels, and that can be pricey, especially during the summer high season. The penultimate stretch of trail, leading to the town of Brewster, inches steadily uphill for at least 15 miles, which, after more than a week of long days, felt like I was conquering the Dolomites. Arriving in Brewster—still about 50 miles from the northern edge of New York City—I found none of the charming, independent B&Bs or idyllic campsites I had depended so much on during my trip. I could have opted to make a break for it and ride a century straight from the Poughkeepsie area to the city on my last day, but I didn’t have it in me. I bought a gas-station beer the size of my head, checked into a soulless Comfort Inn, and ordered a pizza.
Over the course of the whole trip, 11 days in all, I thought often about infrastructure and movement; about how much effort has gone into inventing new ways to travel, ever faster, ever cheaper, ever more efficient. By the time the Erie Canal was completed, the railroad was already ascendant. On large sections of the Hudson Valley’s various rail trails, the rusted remains of iron rails sit, fossilized and inert. Alongside them, on the very beds of dirt where they once ran, the gravel is crisscrossed with bike-tire tracks and packed down with the footprints of millions of pedestrians.
I stopped often, to stretch, to photograph, to think. As it does when traveling on your own power, every mile felt like an achievement, no matter how repetitive and, at moments, no matter how difficult the actions were. Even while choking on smoke, with my legs burning and my bike making new and unfamiliar sounds (brake rub, it turned out), I found myself drawn onward by a sense of discovery—the feeling that I was getting a more solid picture of a concept that has eluded me for most of my life: home.
The closer I got to New York City, the more anything resembling silence was replaced with the constant whir of nearby interstates. Planes rumbled overhead. How much faster can we possibly go? What comes next in our constant hunt for peak efficiency? And what will we do with all that extra free time, anyway? The bike and all the places it can take me beckon.
Sebastian’s Must-Have Gear
Ortlieb Ortlieb Back-Roller Panniers
Every Google search spiraled back to these workhorses from the German company Ortlieb. These packs are easy to use, remarkably durable, and waterproof (I once had one fall into a rushing stream, and everything came out dry). They’re the gold standard, in my book.
Big Agnes Big Agnes Copper Spur HV UL2 Ultralight Tent
This measly 3-pound (and change) tent stashes away into a small package and can withstand most weather you encounter. Big Agnes released a bikepacking version after my purchase, with poles that break down into shorter lengths and a handlebar bag, but I plan to keep using what I’ve got until it fails me.
A lot of rain jackets and shells—while effectively keeping water out—leave me utterly drenched in sweat if I’m pedaling through a downpour, thus defeating the purpose. This extremely lightweight jacket has become my go-to for cycling. It keeps my core dry enough without making me overheat—and, for those nice blue-sky days, it packs away into just about any space.
After dealing with one too many dead-phone situations (or worse) while cycling in the woods, I finally made the switch to using a bike computer for navigation. Karoo makes it easy to customize your display and has an intuitive user interface for inputting routes.
A bike tourer I met once told me he never goes on a trip without them. After fixing broken bags, loose cables, and even a fully loaded rack with cable ties—at least for long enough to get to the nearest bike shop—I, too, am a card-carrying member of the Church of Zip Ties.
Sebastian Modak is a writer, editor, and photographer based in New York City. He spent 2019 circling the globe as the New York Times 52 Places Traveler, reporting from every destination on the Times’ 52 Places to Go list.
