Tourist in his Own Town: 2023-07-17: Siam Road

6.29 mi, 410' gain, 1h42m RT. Windham NY roads 18/46 mi.

I've been struggling to find the motivation to do much roadwalking this summer. I did a lot of work earlier in the year on the Catskill Hundred Highest and finished the Greene County Town Highpoints, but roads have failed to inspire me. By mid-July, I had only been roadwalking twice. I worried that perhaps working on the road for ten hours a day made me enjoy walking less.

In any case, Windham's roads are closed to public parking during the winter, so I really needed to step up my game for the month or so I had left in the summer before going back to school. I looked back to my original roadwalking, when I started in Durham back in 2018, for a sort of return to form. Many of my walks then were straight lines, where I'd walk two to three miles down a road, then turn around and walk back. My loops were always short, five miles at most.

I realized that my lack of passion for roadwalking was due largely to excessively high expectations. Every route I planned out was a 6-8 mile loop. Doing that after a ten-hour work shift in the middle of July isn't really all that appealing, and doing it once was exhausting enough to put me out of the habit for another month. Shorter walks meant less time and less energy, which meant I would walk more often, which, I hoped, would paradoxically mean I get the town done faster.

I ignored warnings on poor air quality due to smoke from Canadian wildfires and headed up to Route 21 this Monday to walk what I thought was a 4-5 mile section of road (I had miscalculated). I had hiked the East Jewett Range at around 80 AQI, and I was curious how well my asthmatic lungs would hold up to the 120 AQI we had on Monday, plus the smoke made the landscapes look kind of interesting. The walk was longer and more exhausting than expected but still well worth it and put me back into the mood for roadwalking.

Roads Walked: CR-21/Mitchell Hollow Road, Siam Road

Looking west towards West Cave Mountain from the southern terminus of CR-21 where it meets NY-23.

The Windham Highway Department is located along Route 21, near the Transfer Station and some other government infrastructure.

Orange haze darkens the sky in this view from the southeast end of Siam Road.

Looking northeast towards Mount Hayden over the Kirk Reservoir.

Some distance off of Siam Road I found this plaque christening the Gerald Kirk Dam. Located on the Batavia Kill, this earthen dam rises easily forty feet above the top of the reservoir and was completed in 1970.