Bike Camping Overnight to Montauk Point

Wed 6/17 38m
Thur 6/18 44m

After reading a trip report at BikeOvernights, I took advantage of an unscheduled two days on LawnGuyLand to take an overnight.

I drove out to Hampton Bays and parked the van at the LIRR station. Headed east on NY80, then Route27. It's much hillier on eastern Long Island than in central LI.

Rode through several very upscale beach communities called The Hamptons (East Hampton, BridgeHampton, SouthHampton, etc). You know how in DC, there are Starbucks located across the street from each other? In one town I saw two Ralph Lauren stores across from each other. The Hamptons are the Sewickley of Suffolk County. When these people put up garage sale signs, the name Sotheby's is on it.



Camped overnight at a recently-developed bike hostel at Montauk County Park, formerly Teddy Roosevelt Park. The park is situated around the "third house", which Roosevelt's 20,000 Rough Riders came to after the Spanish-American War for recuperation and discharge.



This was an excellent bikecamping destination. Rest rooms, a water supply, some electric outlets even! There's a horse farm adjacent, so I fell asleep to crickets, occasional frogs, the sounds of ocean surf and the occasional horse whinney from the paddock. This is a designated "dark skies park" and at about 2.30am, the overcast had cleared and I could make out the Milky Way, which was awesome.

Woke up on Thursday, decided against cooking breakfast. Rode three miles further east to the Montauk Point Lighthouse. They have some hills out here that could make a Pittsburgher homesick.


Stopped at Left Hand Coffee for - well, coffee and breakfast. Totally excellent. Their counter is taken up by this continually-flowing coffee thingy.


Had a flat rear tire. Argghhh. I think it might have been a pinch flat. While studying my tire and looking for the perpetrator, I saw two places where the blue inner-line on my Schwalbe Marathons is just starting to peek through. Time for new tires. Kudos to Amagansett Beach Company, a bike shop, for letting me use their floor pump to top off the tire, and suggesting that I use their restroom to clean up.

In East Hampton, The MaidStone is a posh lodging complete with the expected Adirondack chairs and loaner Euro-urban bikes, because: East Hampton.



This was a very nice overnight. More hills than I expected. Excellent bike camping accomodations. Shops (for food, coffee) are expensive. Roads were great - either there was a generous shoulder marked as a bike lane, or there were signs telling drivers "bikes in lane". All the drivers were very courteous.