Tag: Pennsylvania

This secret long-distance trail in Pennsylvania is one for the bucket list

I’ve discovered the Delaware & Lehigh Trail.

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My last two-day training ride before the Week-a-Year was 70 miles along part of the Delaware and Lehigh Trail in northeastern Pennsylvania. And all four of us on this trip kept looking at each other and saying this is beautiful and why didn’t we know about it?

Here’s some of what it has: miles of thick tree canopy that offers shade on hot summer days and that no doubt will turn brilliant colors at peak leaf time, a gorge, the river, complete with rapids, remnants of the railroad line, down to an old signal, a nature center built on an old superfund site and generous trailheads with shelters and sometimes even toilets. Continue reading “This secret long-distance trail in Pennsylvania is one for the bucket list”

A bike overnight on Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill River Trail

The Schuylkill River Trail could be eastern Pennsylvania’s version of the Great Allegheny Passage.

schuylkill trail

Pennsylvania is one lucky state.

It already has the amazing Great Allegheny Passage, that 150-mile rail-trail from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Md., where it links up to the C&O Canal for those wanting to bike to Washington D.C.

After two days on the Schuylkill River Trail, I think this could be eastern Pennsylvania’s response. Admittedly, the trail isn’t completed and some completed sections are on quiet roads, rather than on paths. Nor will it be as long as the GAP. But even on the stretch we did — just over 50 miles from Conshohocken northwest to Reading, and then back — we had urban and rural, one-time industrial towns, some doing better than others, wide open and tree-covered paths, paved and crushed-stone surfaces, glimpses of river and a detour to history at Valley Forge. We even saw a row of four smokestacks, all that remains from an old factory. It could have been on the GAP.

Continue reading “A bike overnight on Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill River Trail”