Best of Tour Most Idyllic Campground (East) Award

Erie Canal by Night

The choice of winner of the MIC (East) Award was made easier by the rapidly diminishing frequency of low- or no- cost, easily accessible campgrounds as we pedaled eastward.  In more than one case, we were unable to find a patch of grass on which we could safely and legally pitch our tent for the night, and more than once found ourselves at the mercy of sympathetic passers-by who kindly offered their lawns, and in one case by a motel owner in Clintonville, Wisconsin who offered us gratis the spot behind the motel where his son used to set up his tent on warm summer evenings. More often, we found ourselves twisting and turning through the night on the hard pebble tent sites offered at state and provincial campgrounds, often at what we considered extravagant prices.

Quebecois Friends

Hiker/Biker/Boater Campground at Middleport

 Once we made the crossing from Ontario into New York State, The Erie Canalway Trail between Lockport and Palymyra offered welcome relief in the form of Hiker/Biker/Boater campgrounds, grassy areas abutting the canal offered at no cost and blissfully free of mechanized traffic.  Our favorite of these was the HPB campground at the Village Canal Park in Middleport, where we were not only welcomed by the bridge tender but provided with a code to a building with clean bathrooms and hot, steamy showers. Heaven.  We enjoyed an evening with a group of French Canadian cyclists who had whizzed by us earlier on the shady, crushed stone canalway trail, slept on the soft grass and woke up refreshed and ready for more.