The Ride
The coffee shop for today is part of our Upstate Coffee Crawl series on the other side of the Hudson River. A couple of riding buddies joined me, and the Beeline Moto compass indicated 76.7 miles in a straight line to our destination. See our article on discovering new roads with Beeline.
I thumbed the starter on the BMW R1200GSA, departed Cross River, NY, and aimed the bike roughly in alignment with the compass. We had a long ride ahead of us & I hoped to find some fun roads along the way.
We headed toward Carmel and the local favorite road of Route 301, running along several reservoirs in the area and passing through Fahnestock State Park. We aimed to cross the Hudson River at the Bear Mountain Bridge, so we turned south on Dennytown Road and then onto Canopus Hill Road to climb over the ridge separating us from the valley Route 9 runs along. We had a very short section of a dirt road on Old Albany Post Road, one of the country’s oldest unpaved roads, and was built on some of the original native American trails.
We crossed Route 9 onto Snake Hill Road, which winds toward Route 9D near Garrison, New York. Here, we headed south toward the bridge and crossed the Hudson River.
Harriman State Park is just on the other side of the bridge, and as we passed the Bear Mountain Inn, we continued west on Seven Lakes Drive. The drive is one of the most scenic in the park and, as its name suggests, passes by seven lakes. At Lake Tiorati, we turned right onto Arden Valley Road, my favorite road in Harriman State Park. It features several elevation changes and switchbacks as it heads toward Route 17, crossing over Interstate 87.
Route 17 runs roughly north/south here, but the Beeline Moto compass still points northwest. We diverted south on Route 17 to take the Orange Turnpike, which brought us into Monroe, NY, and connected with Route 17M, which aligned roughly with the compass.
