Exploring by bicycle

The Lawrence Hopewell Trail turns 20 (miles)

One more segment of the Lawrence Hopewell Trail is finished.

What a way to end National Bike Month and lead into National Trails Day — a ribbon-cutting for a new section of the Lawrence Hopewell Trail.

I’m a big fan of this 22-mile loop in Lawrenceville and Hopewell (between Trenton and Princeton for those of you not from here). I wrote about riding the entire loop in April, and we got excited at the sight of construction for this new piece of the trail.

This section, just 0.6 miles, lets users avoid busy Rosedale Road by going from Province Line Road into the ETS campus. Once there, you can ride a loop through the campus or just keep going south, across Rosedale and into a neighborhood and then the Carson Woods.

And once the ribbon was cut, joggers and walkers immediately started using it.

D&L Trail: 24 soft-serve flavors on a 2-day bike adventure to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and back

What a shakedown ride: 133 miles over 2 days, going through New Hope and Easton on the D&L Trail. Plus the food report.

This mile marker is along the Lehigh River; unfortunately they aren’t used along the Delaware.

We’ll soon be heading out on another of our longer bike rides, and like last year, we have some new gear. So we needed another shakedown ride, like last year. Also like last year, we chose to make the Delaware & Lehigh Trail the focus. But unlike last year, we made it a two-day affair over Memorial Day weekend.

For a 165-mile trail (admittedly with a few road sections), the D&L Trail seems to still be pretty unknown, as I first said four years ago and again two years ago. Oh sure, people in our area may know there’s a trail on the “Pennsylvania side” of the Delaware between Lambertville and Frenchtown, NJ, and maybe as far south as Washington Crossing. But few realize the trail begins in Bristol, a Philadelphia suburb, and goes through Easton, Bethlehem and Allentown and ends north of I-80. I just keep trying to spread the word.

Rediscovering the B&A Trail between Baltimore and Annapolis

Five years after my first bike ride along the B&A Trail in Maryland, I was back.

Back in 2014, I biked this trail as part of the East Coast Greenway’s Week A Year Ride between Philadelphia and Fredericksburg, Virginia. This year we were in the area for a wedding, so we brought the bikes and headed out for a ride starting just north of Annapolis.

The B&A Trail uses an old rail line that connected, well, Baltimore and Annapolis. Today it’s a well-used 13-mile trail along part of that line that ties into the BWI Trail around the airport with the help of a short connector. Loved seeing the private connections from yards to the trail!

Bicycling from bakery to bakery in Philadelphia

14 pastry stops on one bicycle ride!?!

What a way to see parts of Philadelphia by bike! Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia organized a ride called ProfiteROLL on Saturday that let you hit up to 14 bakeries and coffee shops for sweet treats. Yes, 14!

I tagged along with a sister and her friends, and we skipped a couple of the stops. But even then, I — who shamelessly can admit to eating lots of cookie dough in one sitting and, yes, immediately gobbled down the small portion of edible raw cookie dough offered up at Sweet Box Bakery — had had my share of sugar after just a few stops. Thumbs up to the generous breakfasty bar with jam from Hungry Pigeon that put me over the edge. Good thing the Bicycle Coalition suggested bringing containers to carry the excess.

And they’ve made a good Sunday breakfast. Still some leftovers for Monday.

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.

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.)

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.

Chocolate, chili, bicycle

Finally it’s spring. To kick off the 2019 bike reason, we stopped for chocolate and chili. (Not together!)

Finally — spring is here. Sunny and temps topped 60 today, so time to kick off the 2019 bike season. It’s too early for heavy mileage, so we did an extended version of our short loop in West Windsor, Windsor and Robbinsville. And in those 23 miles of quiet roads, even a bit of trail, we had two great stops.

First was a chocolatier’s shop in an industrial park. We have seen many signs for David Bradley along the highways around here and on the New Jersey Turnpike, but we had never been. This time we saw the sign into the Windsor industrial park and pulled in.

It’s all the way in the back, in the last building., looking like something built decades ago. Nope, nothing fancy.

But when you walk in, it is wall-to-wall chocolate. Easter bunnies, wedding chocolates. Congratualtions chocolate bars. Thank yous in chocolate. Cookies. caramels, fruits, you name it covered in dark chocolate (or, if you must, milk chocolate). And we were immediately offered a sample — a slice of orange or a chunk of pineapple, covered in chocolate.

A bonus day of bicycling around Titusville, Florida

More alligators!

6082B308-4B96-4C4B-85F9-3DB419D57E15 The 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.

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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

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.)

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-84E05B0A7346 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”

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