July 9, starting return mileage 14,230

As old Willie likes to say, “on the road again,” and so we are.

We left amid a little sun, but lots of haze in the direction we were heading. Haze or rain? We'd find out when we got there. It is so nice to see so much green, Green Mountain National Park, the green mountain state. We passed an elevation sign this morning and I missed the number … but don't know that it was even over a thousand feet. Not much elevation in this part of the country except for the ski mountains, and they aren't that high, either.

But it was a lovely ride, as usual, flowers along the road, riding in a hoodie, no gloves. But it looked like showers were up ahead. YAY!! We skirted them. We rode pretty much on Highway 20 today … nice old road that runs through a lot of small towns. We did see a turtle trying to cross the road today. He was in our lane, just trudging toward the other side. Hope he made it.

Plenty of farmland as we crossed into the state of New York and the Hudson River Valley. We saw a baby llama kicking up its heels and it was pretty amusing to see. We finally broke into some blue sky, but still warm, although certainly not as warm and humid as it has been. Probably 80s today. And we finally managed to get a photo of farm equipment going down the road. This guy even waved at us. We'd stopped for a water break alongside the road.

Are all farmers friendly? He was waving nicely at us, and us at him.  We'd been trying to get a tractor action shot for days.

Even saw a few wind turbines today, near Madison, New York. First on this trip so far. It was pretty windy in this area, but they were still turning.
Launched one of my water bottles. I heard something and looked back. Saw it hit the ground, and the car that was behind me, stayed way, way back after that. Who knew that was all you had to do to get them to back off.

We met this other guy who farms and has cows, a Mr. Dennis. It's his farm, and he chatted with us for a few minutes. He probably would have visited all day if we'd let him. His famioly has farmed in this area for years. He farms some, and leases some, and so on.

A friend painted this sign for Mr. Dennis's farm.

We stopped for lunch in a small town (East Springfield), and I was at a loss. I could no longer do BLTs because they would all pale by comparison to the one I had the other day in Waterbury. So, Jaz suggested that BLTs could be the eastbound food, and something else the westbound. So I had a meatloaf sandwich. It wasn't that great, and I really don't know if I can make meatloaf sandwiches the westbound ride sandwich. Too heavy to eat and then try to travel.
I wanted to hit the New York state HOG rally in Syracuse, not to stay, but to stop by. We did, and rested for a bit before hitting the road again. I mostly wanted to get registered to get a shirt and pin. Yep, got r done. They had a really nice booklet for their rally and I'll bring it back.

This is the New York state HOG rally brochure along with the bandana Deb and the gals from Chapter 1836 to sell to raise money for Gene B.  That bandana has been with me the entire trip.  Gene, you're in my thoughts as you battle the cancer.

We were back on the road when I saw something called a pet cemetary. I told Jaz I wanted to turn around to take a few photos.

Statue that caught my eye and got us to turn around.

Never seen a pet cemetary.

When we pulled in the guy from there said there was seven acres and we were welcome to look around, and we did. There's even a horse buried there, and what appears to be people with their pets as well. It is sad to read about the passed on pets; yet it appeals to me because these people loved their animals so much they wanted them to have a resting place. We probably spent a half-hour or better wandering around looking, and of course, I'm sharing some of those photos with you.

This one caught my eye because of the dog being a pheasant hunter.

Some of the plaques are in the ground, others are stand up.  Some are quite elaborate.

There's Traveller, the horse.

Some are quite fancy, and mention multiple pet names.

One appeared to be of more than one ... a pet and a man.

Man and dog must have had a very special bond.

And some were just very simple

From there, we found some of those little cow houses, which I'd certainly never seen before. They're like little igloos, or dog kennels.

There was a whole row of these little cow kennels.

I guess these are little shelters for the baby cows.

Look at that beautiful face.

We continued on our way toward Geneva where we hope to get service tomorrow. The one place we stopped today couldn't get us taken care of in a timely manner.

At one point we pulled into a motel with the intent of staying. Except there was no wi-fi. Since we know we have faithful followers, and we are committed biker bloggers, we passed on that place and kept on going. That was rather a mistake. We were caught in the downpour we had been hearing about all day, the one that would cause flash flooding. Yikes. We found another motel, wandered in dripping all over, and hooray … wi-fi. So we're all in, and dry again.

And it's still raining.