Tag: New Jersey

A new campsite near the D&R Canal and the East Coast Greenway in New Jersey

A camping option smackdab between New York City and Philadelphia.

Lots of space!

There are plenty of places to stay along the East Coast Greenway — unless you want to camp. That’s one of the challenges of a route that goes through densely populated urban areas as it connects some of America’s largest cities.

So add this camping option to the list — and in New Jersey no less, the most densely populated state. Mercer County, smackdab between New York City and Philadelphia, has just opened 10 camping spots in one of its biggest parks. Cost is $20 per night for no more than seven nights.

Continue reading “A new campsite near the D&R Canal and the East Coast Greenway in New Jersey”

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.

Continue reading “The Lawrence Hopewell Trail turns 20 (miles)”

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.

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

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”

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.

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Bruce Springsteen’s Freehold by bike

To kind of quote Bruce, tramps like us, baby we were born to bike.

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When you think New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen has to be high on the list.

So I can’t explain why it took me so long to come up with the idea of a Springsteen bike ride, given that I live in the state. But I finally did this year, after being one of the lucky ones to see him on Broadway.

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Biking 2 trails — the D&R and D&L — to watch polo in Pennsylvania

Polo matches along the Delaware? Who knew?

2B034D8E-1642-49BB-93D7-84CE589BE71FThis 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?

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The D&R Canal: The New Jersey tough version of the Erie Canal

Tapping into the history of the D&R Canal.

3C0C266E-30D6-4F17-81AD-AED4BBC775CBI love combining my bike rides with a bit of history.

So to coincide with a couple of one-day road closures of busy Canal Road in Franklin Township, I’ve organized some family-friendly bike rides for the East Coast Greenway. On the first one, a couple of weeks ago, a half-dozen of us braved the rain to pepper Bob (from the non-profit D&R Canal Watch) with questions about the canal, once one of the busiest navigational canals in the country.

FBB503D8-EBBA-41CE-AE32-8817EB2926C9You know the song about the Erie Canal? That one is far, far longer than the D&R, but the D&R is wider (75 feet across) and deeper (8 feet vs 4 feet), so it could handle more kinds of boats. And that line in the song about “low bridge, everybody down”? Not a problem on the D&R because there are no bridges to go under. So not only could it handle barges but also steam-powered boats.

Bottom line is it’s tougher and stronger than the Erie Canal, even if it is shorter. Call it Jersey tough.

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A cheese stop along New Jersey’s Columbia Trail

Two discoveries: New Jersey’s Columbia Trail and Valley Shepherd Creamery.

I find biking is always more fun when you have a destination in mind. This time, the plan was not only would we discover the gravel-packed 15-mile Columbia Trail in Hunterdon and Morris counties, but we would also stop at Valley Shepherd Creamery.

If only it all went so smoothly. Continue reading “A cheese stop along New Jersey’s Columbia Trail”