Pretty soon you will be able to follow the river on bike from its source in the hills of Pennsylvania northward to Lake Ontario. And when you reach Rochester you will be able to take your choice as to which side of the river you would like to travel on. The city keeps expanding its bike paths and we arranged a weekend tour for a most spectacular ride.
We started by putting our bikes in the car and driving to the zoo in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Seneca Park. We parked and rode out of the zoo entrance and across Saint Paul Boulevard to Collingwood where we found the newest section of the city’s ever expanding bike paths, “El Camino,” on a repurposed old rail bed. We rode north past the former Ridge Lumber (Home of Lanky Planky) and across 104 on a foot bridge with a graffiti carpet past the open air drug markets of Avenue D, C, B and A, stopping frequently to marvel at the new murals painted by the Wall Therapy Project on the backs of abandoned industrial buildings.
We lost the path north of Clifford Avenue and wound up on the Bausch Street Bridge where we crossed the river looking for the west side path to take us back to Seneca Park. Traveling north on Lake Avenue to Driving Park we spotted the illusive trail. Determined to find out where we went wrong we took the path back south down along the river where I took this shot. The big art Deco building is Kodak’s Hawk Eye plant where they made bomb sites for the military. My father worked here and was sworn to secrecy. I love the name of the bridge, “Driving Park!”
If we had gotten off El Camino when we got to Clifford we could have crossed Saint Paul and gotten on the northbound trail that crosses the river on an old RG&E power plant and then travels along the west side of the river gorge into Maplewood Park where you have the option to continue north to the lake or cross back over the river on a foot bridge that leads into Seneca Park and the zoo where our car was parked.
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