miles: 338
time: 11 hours
What a day. As in "Wow, what a day!"
Last night was a little rough for sleeping because someone in the Cape Henlopen camping area was a big snorer. I don't think it could have been louder. There was also a guy playing video games for a while. Pretty urban camping.
Pittsfield State Forest seems almost opposite: no water, miles from anything. All I am hearing are the bullfrogs.
So, back to today. I started out by taking the Lewes-Cape May Ferry (pronounced Lewis?). It was a great experience, parked my bike at the front and enjoyed the ride. I was on the 10:15 ferry, I got to the terminal at about 9:15 which was late (assuming I had a schedule I was trying to keep :-)... but... did I mention the snoring guy?
From Cape May, N.J. I took the Garden State Parkway north. Not the most fun ride but it gets you there and rural New Jersey actually is kinda nice.
I drove through Patterson and it had some really bad areas and I started wondering what Zumo (the GPS) had gotten us into but then we got to some really nice areas. I stopped for lunch at a little mall area and had a really good Chicken stromboli.
Now getting to the best part. The Seven Lakes area getting to the Bear Mountain Bridge was awesome. Some really scenic, laid-back riding. Just really great. Then the Bear Mountain Bridge was cool and the route right after was phenomenal with a really fun twisty road. Then through some small towns in Connecticut into Massachusetts. I need to look up a few of the towns because they just looked so nice.
Another first for me was taking my bike through a covered bridge.
Up through New Jersey was pretty hot but New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut were much cooler; Connecticut and New York were almost cold! It felt nice.
I also have a pretty good routine now for paying tolls. I have a tin full of change in my pocket and when there is a toll collector I hand over the whole tin and let her get what she needs :-)
The final first, and I'm not even going to let it put a tarnish on the day, was that I dropped my bike getting into my campsite. Normally that would upset me to no end but I'm not going to be ashamed of it, it happens, it happened, 'nuff said. I was crossing a washed out shoulder from the dirt road into my campsite and ended up short-saddling myself, that is ran out of momentum when my legs were over the ditch so I couldn't reach. A mistake, yes, but if you don't push yourself to make mistakes you might as well stay at home watching TV where it is nice and safe. Fortunately this mistake wasn't a big one. I haven't seen any damage yet... The mirror was twisted and the shift lever was bent but I put these back to right without even going into my tool pouch. I also managed to get the bike up and out of the ditch myself, so that is an accomplishment. As far as drops go I'll give that one a 9.0. Oh, and I didn't hurt myself! :-)
So many cool sights I wanted to take pictures of but sometimes you just have to drink in the experience. I must say the smaller Massachusetts towns looked really nice with all kinds of people out on Main street for a Friday evening.
Dinner was Mary Jane's Mac and Cheese- yuk. Cooking the noodle dishes is a bit of an art and clearly I need more practice.
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