Off to an early start this morning and I am once again on the canal path. Rolling through the woods along the Mohawk River with cool weather and cloud cover makes for perfect riding conditions. Passing through Rotterdam Junction I discovered the Mabee farmsite. It is the oldest series of buildings in the valley and date back to 1680. The homestead was deeded by the King of England and had been in the same family for 3 centuries before it was recently turned into a historic site. I have also seen some of the historic locks along the way that a local resident informed me were 200 years old. The canal numbering system is going down as I'm heading east and getting closer to the origin point and lock #1. Technically the system started in Watervlie and only local traffic went to Albany. I moved south off the canal to proceed down to Albany so I could follow Lincoln's path,- but I can now safely say that I "know every inch of the way from Albany to Buffalo".

In order to get into downtown Albany I had to take route 5 and get on the sidewalks part of the time. A busy road with historic signs commemorating the march of the Conntinental Army seemed rather odd and out of place. Arriving by the current Capitol building is quite a site with it's mix of Romanesque and Renaissance styles of architecture. All of this grandeur however was built after Lincoln's presidency but the immediate sense of seeing the structure is that I am looking at a Parliament building. In the lawn just adjacent to Eagle Street is a small marker noting Lincoln's stop at what was then the Old State Capitol builing. In Albany for the first time he admitted his weariness. Having read his comments all along the way, I can see him repeating himself a bit. This is over 1400 miles from home and the quiet contempletive spaces of central Illinois. I can relate to the fatigue, but their can be "no rest for the weary" as it is time tomorrow to move south along the Hudson and make my appointments at Poughkeepsie.