How to bike to the Plainsboro Preserve

Two easy options to bike to the Plainsboro Preserve.

Not every bike ride needs to be 50 miles, or even 30 miles. This is a family-friendly ride done with my neighbors in mind, one that gets you across Plainsboro to the New Jersey Audubon Society’s Plainsboro Preserve and almost 1,000 acres of preserved land.

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This updated Connecticut trail map makes my 2021 ride list

The traffic-free route from East Hartford to Willimantic on the Charter Oak Greenway and Hope River Trail.

Happy biking, all!

Take a look at this just-updated map of Connecticut’s Charter Oak and Hop River trails.

You can ride traffic-free from East Hartford all the way to Willimantic — just wow! (OK, it looks like there might the tiniest section on the road.) That’s about 26.2 miles, or the length of a marathon for my runner friends.

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A bike ride to River Horse Brewing in Ewing, New Jersey

The D&;R Canal and the Lawrence Hopewell Trail get you within 30 minutes by bike of River Horse Brewing in Ewing, New Jersey.

That’s a brewery.

Time for another “weird beer” ride. This time we decided to try one of the big boys.

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Four Seasons (Total Landscaping) to Four Seasons (Hotel) — a Philadelphia bike ride

The “Fraud Street Run” is a great opportunity to check out some Philadelphia trails.

Should anyone be surprised that someone came up with the crazy inspiration of a route between these two Philadelphia news-making sites in this crazy election month?

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How to bike from Trenton to Camden, New Jersey

It’s not as daunting as you might think.

New trail along the Delaware River.

Biking to Philadelphia on the New Jersey side has long intrigued me, especially after having ridden to Philly on the Pennsylvania side. So when a group a sister has started riding with announced a ride from Trenton to Camden and then over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Philadelphia, I was all in (well, at least to Camden.)

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Tour de Pines 2020 finale: Perfection

Another day off from work to take advantage of perfect fall weather — and this bike ride was so worth it.

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More New Jersey Pine Barrens: The Forked River route in the Tour de Pines

A bike ride through an unfamiliar part of New Jersey.

We took a day off from work — the forecast called for 75 degrees and sun. Would this be the final glorious fall day? Hopefully not, but we weren’t going to pass up a perfect blue-sky day.

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Biking deep into New Jersey’s Pine Barrens

This bike ride from Hammonton is inspiring me to bike more in South Jersey.

Our second ride of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance’s 2020 Tour de Pines took us deeper into the Pinelands: A road lined with pine trees as far as you can see, a sandy road that we fortunately didn’t take, a fire tower we didn’t climb. Sunlight glistening off a lake on a sunny October day.

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Biking in the Pine Barrens: the Carranza ride

Who the heck is Emilio Carranza? A doomed Mexican aviator. We learn his story on a 49-mile bike ride in rural Burlington County, New Jersey.

We’re doing the Tour de Pines again after having such a great time last year. Thanks to COVID-19, it’s do it when you have the time, rather than on a set day with dozens of other cyclists, like so many other rides.

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Day 3 of a Connecticut-Rhode Island adventure along the East Coast Greenway

A day of more biking on roads than trails .. but there are big plans afoot in this part of eastern Connecticut.

Along the Moosup Valley Trail

Day 3 of our Connecticut-Rhode Island adventure was closing the gap between Day 1 and Day 2 — biking from the campground close to the Rhode Island line to Putnam, Connecticut, along the East Coast Greenway route.

This stretch was more road than trail, and a good lesson that you don’t have to bike on the route you’d drive.

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