Roundabouts on a rail-trail? Found ‘em in Florida. And
What a day!
This is the last full day of the 2018 edition of the East Coast Greenway’s annual Week-A-Year fundraising ride, and we spent much of it pedaling on quiet roads or trails— including 34 straight miles on the East Central Rail Trail, part of the Coast-to-Coast Connector that will stretch from Titusville on the Atlantic side of Florida to Tampa-St. Pete on the Gulf of Mexico side. (It’s 80% complete.)
Continue reading “Day 6: 63 miles from Daytona Beach to Titusville, Florida”The sights and sounds of the fifth day of the 2018 edition of the East Coast Greenway’s annual Week-A-Year Tour.
The most memorable sound of day 5 of the East Coast Greenway’s Week-A-Year Tour: the boom from the SpaceX rocket launched this afternoon at Cape Canaveral that we heard (and felt the rumble) 60 miles away in Daytona.
Second sound of the day: the roar of the ocean, heard from the hotel room balcony. (If only it was warm enough to feel like we should be playing on the beach.)
Yes, we are in the spring break capital of America. And we are hearing that Daytona Beach wants to change its image, attract more people like .. us. That would be adults on bikes.
Continue reading “Day 5: 64 miles from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach, Florida”
Fabulous riding in Florida, aided by a powerful headwind.
We were blown down the coast of Florida today, propelled by a strong tailwind that had us hitting close to 25 mph on flat road while pedaling seemingly effortlessly. That’s a casual pace for the Tour de France, but a speed we mortals can’t sustain. Wow! (And so glad we weren’t trying to go north.)
Florida is quite the contrast to Georgia. Lots more money. Lots. The East Coast Greenway route took us down the coast, so start with normal beach towns. Then ramp it up and up and up some more as you hit Ponte Vedra Beach. We took the residential road one block in from the beach that ran for miles, and the estimates for the value of these mansions kept rising — a million or two dollars at a time. All ginormous. As for their beauty, well, it’s a matter of taste. One rider called it F-you money. As for me, I wondered how many of them take advantage of taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance. Not that they would see it as a handout, of course. And who does the work maintaining their yards and cleaning their homes?
But let me start at the beginning of a great day. We pedaled a few miles from our hotel off the main drag in St. Mary’s to the historic part of town, where East Coast Greenway had chartered an hour-long ferry ride across the St. Mary’s River to Fernandina Beach, Florida. Folks in St. Mary’s want to turn this into regular service, and I hope they succeed. There’s certainly a well-connected and enthusiastic cheerleader for the area. Amelia Island in Florida was beautiful, and more trails are being developed; St. Mary’s needs to find a way to lure tourists — in this case, cyclists — across the river. What story can it tell?
Continue reading “Day 4: 70 miles from St. Mary’s, Georgia, to St. Augustine, Florida”The day’s highlights: a rail trail and a “submarine”.
Today’s highlights: the Georgia Coast Trail in Woodbine, the “submarine” outside a military base and tagging along with Brent for his talk about the East Coast Greenway to about three dozen people at a meeting of a military officers association in St. Mary’s. Only a few of them may want to get on their bikes, but they certainly could appreciate the dollars from filling around 30 rooms at a locally owned, non-chain motel.
Once again, worries about the weather were unfounded. No rain. We finally got the sun and heat we were expecting (while there’s snow in the forecast at home — glad to be missing that!)
Continue reading “Day 3: 72 miles from Jekyll Island to St. Mary’s, Georgia”
I’m heading out soon on a bike ride that is another installment of thhe East Coast Greenway Alliance’s Week-A-Year ride on track to reach Key West in 2019.
In a couple of weeks, we’ll be pedaling out of Savannah, Georgia, headed south for around 300 miles on our bicyles. We’ll follow the East Coast Greenway for six days, to the trail town of Titusville, Florida, near Cape Canaveral, where we will play on the seventh day.
Once again, our route will be a mix of trails away from traffic (sometimes lined with Spanish moss), quiet roads, roads with bike lanes or shoulders — and some not-great stuff, like more of U.S. 17, our nemesis last year. That’s the reality of creating a 3,000-mile route down the East Coast that goes through cities, rather than opting for the middle of nowhere to avoid anything difficult.
There’s been big progress on Connecticut’s Farmington trail since I biked it in 2016.
I’ve been touting Connecticut’s Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, which bifurcates the states as it heads north from New Haven and ends in Massachusetts, as a 5-star trail ever since I biked it in 2016.
Now it’s even better because all the construction projects I saw two years ago have been completed. Only one sizeable gap remains — the 5-mile “Plainville Gap” up to Southington. While the state has approved funding for the project, the gap likely won’t be closed until at least 2023. You can cope by using roads and sidewalks, but of course that’s not quite the same thing.
This gives a sense of just how popular parts of the Farmington trail are.
Continue reading “Connecticut’s Farmington Canal Trail: One last major gap”
We biked on the new Jack A. Markell Trail from Wilmington to New Castle and part of the Michael Castle Trail cutting westward across Delaware.
Four years ago, I was on a bike ride from Wilmington, Delaware, that had us meandering through some industrial areas, navigating the traffic headed for I-295 and riding on Delaware highway 9 just to get to New Castle seven miles away. We met the governor at the time, a cyclist, and he bluntly told us that it wasn’t a great route … and that better was coming.
Better has finally arrived, and it’s not just better, it’s fabulous: a trail from the environmental center in the middle of the Wilmington riverfront’s wildlife refuge all the way to New Castle. One beautiful bridge over the Christina River visible from I-95, two well-lit tunnels, under I-495 and I-295, one long boardwalk through the wildlife refuge, plus woods in another section. Great variety!
Continue reading “Discovering two Delaware bike-trail gems: the Markell trail and the Castle trail”
Polo matches along the Delaware? Who knew?
This bike ride began with a tip: you can watch polo matches in Tinicum Park, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, just across the Delaware River from New Jersey.
Polo? That blue-blood sport? Who knew?
Continue reading “Biking 2 trails — the D&R and D&L — to watch polo in Pennsylvania”
The Pennypack winds and climbs (if just briefly) alongside Pennypack Creek.
Trails have a reputation for being flat and, to some people, kind of boring. That’s because many were once railroad lines, and locomotives aren’t going to pull a train up a steep hill or around a sharp curve.
Philadelphia’s Pennypack Trail breaks that mold. It winds and climbs (if only briefly) along the Pennypack Creek, offering riders shade and water views.
Continue reading “Philadelphia’s Pennypack Trail: A surprisingly hilly bike ride”
The final (half) day of our five-day, two-nation bike ride brings us back in the U.S.A.
The final leg in our 5-day, two-nation bike tour was the 26-mile Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail, which begins within a few miles of the border crossing in Richford, Vermont, and ends just north of downtown St. Albans.
This is a quiet, if perhaps underutilized, rail-trail — we counted just 23 cyclists, 2 dog walkers (each with one dog), and two women on horseback as we rode the entire length on Saturday.
Continue reading “Closing our loop: Vermont’s Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail”
Exploring by bicycle 