My favorite skate in Central New York is a scenic, winding 9-mile trip up the 900-foot limestone Onondaga Escarpment from Chittenango to Cazenovia. Actually, it’s the downhill skate back to Chittenango from Cazenovia that makes it my favorite route. There’s very little traffic on the smooth, well-paved road, and the shoulders are nice and wide.
Cazenovia, on lovely Cazenovia Lake, is a small, leafy village with many beautiful, historical homes and buildings, and there’s a friendly little coffee shop to stop and rest the feet. The bar is friendly, too, but the beer selection is not the greatest if you like craft beers.
Halfway between the two towns is a quiet little park, which has a nice hiking trail and a beautiful waterfall. At the end of the skate, is the quaint little village of Chittenango, birthplace of L. Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of OZ.” Here, you can visit the L. Frank Baum OZ Musuem, and right across the street is a nice little tavern with a robust selection of beers to enjoy after a beautiful day’s skating.
http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=11
http://www.baumozmuseum.com/Museum.htm
In the northerwest part of the above map is Onondaga Lake, site of Onondaga Lake Park, which is by far the most popular place to inline skate in Central New York. The park has a brand new “aggressive” skatepark, and the well-paved “Class One” skate/bike trail along the east shore of the lake is about 7 miles long. The county has tentative plans to “loop the lake” with a 12-mile skate/bike trail, and if this happens it will be huge, and I believe it will provide a tremendous boost in the popularity of inline skating in Central New York.
http://onondagacountyparks.com/loop_lake.asp
Oh, and there’s a great little fish joint you can skate to (and into), and of course they serve beer.
