Category: bike trail

A bicycle ride over 4 covered bridges in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to 1 firehouse roast beef dinner

A bike ride in New Jersey and Pennsylvania with a food destination in mind.

Turn left! Turn left!

I always say a bike ride is better with a destination or theme in mind. Or that it’s all about the food. Our latest two-state ride did both.

After stumbling across the Stockton Fire Department‘s pancake breakfast years ago, we’ve been talking about going to its roast beef dinner. When the post card announcing this spring’s date arrived in the mail, it went on the calendar. No more stalling.

Stockton is along the Delaware River, and we’ve ridden both the D&R Canal on the Jersey side and the D&L Trail on the Pennsylvania side. (We picked up lunch here on our bike ride to watch polo last fall, for example.) This time, though, we weren’t going to take it easy with a flat ride. Instead we picked out a ride posted on Ride With GPS that took us into the hills on both sides of the Delaware River.

Early on, we crossed New Jersey’s only covered bridge, the one-lane Green Sergeant with wooden planks for the floor as well as wooden sides and top. (Traffic going the other way takes a flat modern bridge.)

Continue reading “A bicycle ride over 4 covered bridges in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to 1 firehouse roast beef dinner”

New Jersey’s Lawrence Hopewell Trail is a gem you should discover

Put it this way: I couldn’t stop smiling.

Now I have ridden sections of the Lawrence Hopewell Trail many times, even at night during the annual Moonlight Ride. But Saturday was the first time I set out to ride the entire 22-mile loop. And I have to say the whole of this New Jersey trail is better than its parts.

Put it this way: I just couldn’t stop smiling.

The LHT has so much variety that you can’t dismiss it with oh, trails are boring. Sometimes you’re biking through the woods, other times through the fields or next to a lake. You go for miles through Mercer County’s largest park. There’s the options for a food stop in Lawrenceville. History at the “pole farm,” where 10-story (yes, story) timber poles stood for decades, supporting antenna wires that relayed phone calls across the Atlantic. It looks like spinach is already growing at a big organic farm. Lots of curves and turns, not the straight lines of an abanonded rail line that’s been converted into a trail.

The surface changes too. Sometimes it’s paved, but there’s dirt, crushed stone too. Sometimes it felt soft on my 28 mm road-bike tires (thankfully with some tread), and I felt I fishtailed a bit. Anyone on wider tires, though, will have no problem. And there was even a bit of mud to go around or (ugh) walk through, holding up my featherweight bike.

Signage — with one exception — is perfect.

Continue reading “New Jersey’s Lawrence Hopewell Trail is a gem you should discover”

A bonus day of bicycling around Titusville, Florida

More alligators!

6082B308-4B96-4C4B-85F9-3DB419D57E15The East Coast Greenway’s 2018 edition of its Week-A-Year Tour is over after 369 or so miles across 6 days. But some of us weren’t quite ready to get off the bike, and so we joined Titusville residents for a 10-mile fun ride on its trail and its Chain of Lakes Park.

Props to the 7-year-old in the group. Not only did she ride the whole way, but when her handlebar grip went flying off, causing her to lose her balance and tumble onto the grass, she bounced up with “don’t worry, I’m fine” to her mother. That’s the attitude!

We northeners remained fascinated with alligators, stopping twice for photo ops. What a big one! It hung around for a while before tiring of our gawking, lifting itself up and waddling into the water.

37016251-2BFD-465F-9397-411F91B3BAE8

Continue reading “A bonus day of bicycling around Titusville, Florida”

Day 6: 63 miles from Daytona Beach to Titusville, Florida

Roundabouts on a rail-trail? Found ‘em in Florida. And

52236651-B8D4-49EF-857C-1C8A6946E21B

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”

Day 5: 64 miles from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach, Florida

The sights and sounds of the fifth day of the 2018 edition of the East Coast Greenway’s annual Week-A-Year Tour.

99DDB2B3-C02E-4EE9-8F0B-84E05B0A7346The 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”

Day 4: 70 miles from St. Mary’s, Georgia, to St. Augustine, Florida

Fabulous riding in Florida, aided by a powerful headwind.

13FDD88B-70A6-4744-BEC3-19D2A7591CFE

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”

Day 3: 72 miles from Jekyll Island to St. Mary’s, Georgia

The day’s highlights: a rail trail and a “submarine”.

22EAC96F-CB02-488C-9AA5-4C206C661125
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”

Biking another segment of the East Coast Greenway, this time in Georgia and Florida

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.

ecg way patches
Looking for No. 6

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.

Continue reading “Biking another segment of the East Coast Greenway, this time in Georgia and Florida”

Connecticut’s Farmington Canal Trail: One last major gap

There’s been big progress on Connecticut’s Farmington trail since I biked it in 2016.

farmington canal signI’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”

Discovering two Delaware bike-trail gems: the Markell trail and the Castle trail

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.

F2A807C1-0BE2-47A1-906E-AACD7A7B143D

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”