This bike ride, at close to 30 miles, goes from West Windsor through the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area and back via Hightstown.
I discovered the Assunpink area thanks to NJDOT’s High Point to Cape May route and have done many variations of a loop through it since then.
This one, at close to 30 miles, starts and ends by the West Windsor Senior Center (more parking than the nearby library and about a mile from the Princeton Junction train station).
Continue reading “A loop through the Assunpink wildlife refuge”The bike-ped path on the new Scudders Falls Bridge is finally open.
There’s now one more way for bicyclists (and walkers and runners) to cross between New Jersey and Pennsylvania — using the new 0.7-mile bike-ped path along the new $534 million (or is it $570 million? After once being projected to cost “just” $310 million?) Scudders Falls Bridge project on I-295.
It opened about a week ago so of course we had to check it out. And it’s great, with long ramps on both ends up to bridge height about 23 feet above the river from the D&R Canal towpath on the Jersey side and the Delaware Canal towpath (part of the D&L Trail) on the PA side as well as a few bump-outs so you can pull over and stare northward (or downward).
Continue reading “A new bike crossing over the Delaware River”Wow what hills. And what gorgeous scenery. Two days of bicycling in the Brandywine Valley southwest of Philadelphia.
Wow, what hills. Not really long, and only a brief moment of 12% grade. But non-stop. Even when the route looked flat on a map, it was still small ups and downs throughout our Brandywine Valley routes. Tour de Pines this was not! Perhaps my hardest two days of riding this year?
We pulled our routes for two days off Ride With GPS, so you really never know what you are going to get. These were fabulous — nearly 44 miles from Chadds Ford north, then west, then back through Kennett Square, the mushroom capital, and skirting south back to Chadds Ford on day 1, and straight out of our hotel — the Inn at Mendenhall — north past Longwood Gardens, then looping south into Delaware and then back north to the hotel for 34 miles and change on day 2. Parts followed Pennsylvania Bike Route L (a north-south route from near Binghampton, N.Y., to Delaware) and Delaware Bike Route 1, another north-south route.
Continue reading “Biking in the Brandywine Valley: Hills, headwinds and Hurricane Ida’s wrath”There’s a fantastic newish trail that takes you into Washington, D.C.
Back when I biked from Annapolis to Alexandria, Virginia, along the East Coast Greenway in 2014, the route to Washington, D.C., relied on the Northwest Branch Trail. Today there’s another option, and I think it’s even better.
This is the Anacostia River Trail, which runs along the eastern side of the Anacostia River, which feeds into the Potomac River, and crosses back into D.C. nearish to the Capitol. There’s more on the western side (some still under construction) that goes past the old (soon to be demolished?) RFK Stadium and near the pro baseball and soccer stadiums.
Continue reading “I’ve found another 5-star trail on the East Coast Greenway — this time in D.C.”We venture even further south in New Jersey to a rare area where people are relatively scarce.
The final ride of the 2021 edition of Tour de Pines may be my favorite yet: so much time bicycling on quiet roads plus my first time in gorgeous Belleplain State Forest. Who would have expected all this in the most densely populated (and can I say most congested?) state in the U.S.?
Continue reading “Tour de Pines 2021, day 4: I’m in love with Belleplain State Forest”We looked hard. What we found instead.
Oh I looked for the Jersey Devil on this 51-mile ride on the Tour de Pines, particularly around Leeds Point, the eastern-most part of our route and its alleged birthplace.
No luck.
Continue reading “Tour de Pines 2021, day 3: The hunt for the Jersey Devil”A tale of immigrant New Jersey deep in the Pine Barrens.
We aborted this bike ride after nearly 5 miles (I’ll spare you the explanation, but all is fine — we’ll find another day to ride the 52 miles, maybe a bit less, and finally see Chatsworth, the heart of the Pine Barrens).
On the other hand, I had time to explore historic Whitesbog Village, once New Jersey’s largest cranberry farm and a place where they apparently treated their workers better than the rest. It also was home to Elizabeth Coleman White, who developed the blueberry cultivar we eat today.
Continue reading “Tour de Pines 2021, day 2: Historic Whitesbog Village plus Potato the baby pig”We biked nearly 50 miles in southern Burlington County.
This is my third year exploring New Jersey’s giant Pine Barrens ecosystem and preserved open space, thanks to the Tour de Pines bike rides organized by the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. It’s back as group rides this year, though over four days instead of the five pre-COVID.
Continue reading “Tour de Pines 2021, day 1: Cranberries and ice cream sandwiches”I dreaded seeing the damage from Henri and Ida. What a mess.
The remnants of Hurricanes Henri and Ida walloped New Jersey in August and September, and the D&R Canal towpath was smack in the path of both. The Millstone River flooded, Canal Road flooded, all kinds of major roads flooded … it was not pretty.
I dreaded seeing the damage to the canal towpath (also part of the East Coast Greenway).
We finally biked the section from Trenton to Princeton after Sunday’s big rally for the Essex-Hudson Greenway. Here’s what we found:
Continue reading “Hurricanes Henri and Ida ripped up the D&R Canal towpath”Gov. Murphy, commit to building this trail!
Today we joined the tail end of a bike ride from Newark to Trenton to tell Gov. Murphy that we want an old railway line turned into a 9-mile trail connecting Jersey City and Newark — the two largest cities in the state’s most densely populated counties — and on to Montclair.
Continue reading “Let’s get the Essex-Hudson Greenway built!”
Exploring by bicycle 