So, that's that. All finished. Thank you to everyone who helped me.
I'll just do one last thing here before I sign off for good. A lot of people have said to me this summer that they'd like to ride around at least one Finger Lake themselves. They ask me which they should do. Now that I've got some first-hand knowledge, I thought I'd describe each of them briefly here, in case you want to go out for a ride before the weather turns.
Here are my 10 rides, subjectively ranked from easiest to hardest. (There are 11 lakes, but I did Canadice and Hemlock together.)
By the way, you can go to mapmyride.com/routes and search any of the lake names, and you'll get some detail on the mileage and climbing for each of them, as well as directions. That's what I did. You can do the same sort of thing with Google topographical maps. Just search "Seneca Lake topographical map," for example, and it comes right up. Click the cycling icon as your mode of transportation and it gives you the hilliness details.
My rankings, from easiest to hardest:
10) Honeoye Lake - 18 miles, 279 feet in elevation gain. This one was really quite pleasant. At a very leisurely pace, it took us about 90 minutes to finish. No real climbing at all. A great ride to get your feet wet.
9) Conesus Lake - 19 miles, 407 feet in elevation gain. Conesus is maybe a little more up-and-down than Honeoye, but pretty much the same thing. Less than two hours for certain, no real hills. Hugs the lake a little more closely than Honeoye.
8) Owasco Lake - 31 miles, 1,206 feet in elevation gain. If you're a more or less regular cyclist with a bicycle in fair shape, Owasco will be a fun ride for you. The hills are gradual and traffic is minimal. Nice views of the water.
7) Otisco Lake - 17 miles, 726 feet in elevation gain. By the numbers, Otisco is no harder than Honeoye or Conesus, and in fact it's easy enough for about 16.5 miles. It felt much harder, though, because of a short but very steep incline on Moon Hill Road. It was the only spot that really defeated me the entire summer. That being said - you could easily dismount and walk up in 15 minutes, and be on your way again.
6) Skaneateles Lake - 40 miles, 1,864 feet in elevation gain. I would say those first four lakes make up one category among the 10 rides. They're a perfectly fine starting point for a recreational cyclist. Skaneateles, Keuka and Canandaigua are a step up. The riding on Skaneateles isn't a lot more rigorous, but there's some extra distance. There were one or two longish, moderate climbs, but still nothing too bad. A very beautiful stretch of riding on the south/southwest end of the lake.
5) Keuka Lake - 59 miles, 2,149 feet in elevation gain. As I mentioned in my write-up, this was my favorite ride. The views were great and you mostly avoid heavy traffic. There are three towns along the way, so it's easy to break the ride up. The distance is the only real challenge, but if 59 miles seems long, you can shortcut across the bluff (the land between the prongs of the Y) and shorten it by 15 miles or so.
4) Canandaigua Lake - 42 miles, 1,334 feet in elevation gain. This is a ride you can really customize to your own liking. On the west side, there are a number of options for where you ascend from the shore to the ridge. We took probably the easiest one, but there are a number of others. Bopple Hill Road is semi-legendary as the steepest ride in the region; I could only marvel at it from the car. Canandaigua is probably the worst ride in terms of having to share the road with cars and trucks.
3) Cayuga Lake - 93 miles, 2,180 feet in elevation gain. This one requires some explanation. I'm ranking them the way I did them. In this case, that means riding from just south of Seneca Falls around to just northwest of Ithaca in one day, then finishing on the second day. That's about 60 and 35 miles on the two days. The first day has some pretty challenging climbs; the second day is quite pleasant. I should note that if we were considering this as a one-day ride like the others, it would be the hardest.
2) Seneca Lake - 79 miles, 1,767 feet in elevation gain. This is a pretty uncomplicated ride. It's just very frickin' long. Not too hilly. Nice to see all the wineries. Very long.
1) Canadice and Hemlock lakes - 43 miles, 3,010 feet in elevation gain. This was my first ride; it feels like a long time ago. The distance isn't too bad, and in fact it only took us maybe four hours to finish, as I recall. But you'll note that the figure-eight around Canadice and Hemlock has about 50 percent more elevation gain than Cayuga in less than half the distance. That means a lot of climbing, including one very big push in the last few miles. This and Seneca Lake were the two rides where I truly felt out of gas at the end.
I hope everyone who enjoys riding their bike will consider tackling one or two of these, as it suits your ability and equipment. And thanks for following my blog posts!
