S24Oing the Genesee Valley Greenway

This past Friday night, Jess and I went out on a S24O camping trip down the Genesee Valley Greenway. It’s was a very casual, fun, refreshing adventure; and I highly recommend that those in Rochester check out the trail. Pictures and a bit of story telling follow.

We got off to a bit of a funny start - we made our way down the river trail and hit the Greenway where it begins near Genesee Valley Park. At one point, pretty early on, the trail ends and you have to jump onto Scottsville Road to continue on.

Sorry, it’s time to hit the road! 

The Friends of the GVG announce on their site that a trail will be built next to the road in 2002 or 2003, and we can’t wait! Scottsville Road runs through a busy industrial section of town, past the airport, and the shoulder is littered with broken glass, metal shards, and nails. In fact, Jess found a nail with her tire!

The macro lens helps ensure that the nail is the central focus of this picture. 

Lucky for us, I had a patch kit with me, and Jess got to learn how to patch a tube! Twice! Because the nail went through both sides of her tube! 

A perfect learning opportunity 

While we were surveying the damage up on the sidewalk off of Scottsville Road (and looking totally stranded), a cyclist almost ran us over riding the wrong way down the street on the sidewalk. Then he stopped right past us, I thought to offer us help or encouragement, but just to ignore us and adjust his load. We found the situation quite humorous.

As we continued on, we were concerned that we wouldn’t be able to find the point where the trail picked back up, but lucky for us another random cyclist was riding up ahead and turned right down the trail (here’s where he turned). On the way back we found a better way to pick the trail back up - as you head south on Scottsville Road, you’ll hit some railroad tracks a good distance before the intersection with Jefferson (with a railroad bridge on your left). There’s a path on your right immediately after the tracks (here’s where it is on a map). You’ll have to lift your bike over the guardrail, but after that it’s easy to head down the trail and spot where the Greenway turns off to the left.

The Greenway itself is quite lovely. There’s a misconception that it runs along the Genesee River - in fact, the trail runs on the old Genesee Valley Canal towpath, which was later turned into a railroad. You can learn these interesting historical tidbits by reading signs while being eaten by mosquitoes on the trail.

The trail isn’t paved, but in most parts it is relatively smooth, and always wide enough to ride side by side. 

We stopped for dinner at a small park in Scottsville (the faraway town, not the road we had braved earlier) and ate vegan ham and cheese sandwiches by a water treatment plant.

You can see here that our gear-hauling setup consists of milk crates. It works. 

After dinner, we continued on the path, keeping an eye out for a good place to spend the night. At some points the old canal bed looked like a fun place to set up a tent, but in other places it was filled with swampy, stagnant water. As daylight began to fade we kept looking. And finally we found a lovely spot right off the side of the trail. The bugs were out strong that night, so I quickly began setting up tent while Jess got our gear in order.

This picture is from the next day, but I’d figure you’d want to see the setup. 

Safe inside our tents, we heard an ATV roar down the trail, and soon after a bunch of cyclists, one yelling towards our tent “Hells yeah, they have the right idea!” Otherwise no company out late at night.

The next day a recreational rider stopped by our tent. He implied that he’s been out on the trail a lot since he was a kid and never sees campers, and never thought of camping but liked the idea. We made our way back up the trail, passing cyclists and dog walkers along the way.

And we were back in Rochester by about 10:00am. Our little trip was short, but a lot of fun, and I look forward to more S24O trips in the future.

Adventure awaits you in the Genesee Valley! 

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