Keep Calm and Pedal On

Who do we think we are heading back out for more bike adventures when we’ve already finished San Diego to Key West and The Northeast Scramble earlier this year?

I’ll tell ya. We are “Mr. and Mrs. Ready to Complete our 50 State Chase” and finish riding our bikes in all 50 states. The Tour De N’Utah will give us states number 48 and 49.

The hardest part of this trip (since we drove here and have our car and that makes most everything easy) is keeping up with some of our favorite fellow adventurers who are also out on tour. Mike and Sue have ridden their bikes around the perimeter of the US and are now on EuroVelo 6 riding across Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea.

We share a love of the west with Garry who is On The Road Again headed west for a backpack trip to floor of the Grand Canyon and back yet finds every opportunity to explore sites along the way (that I’ve bet you’ve never heard of but wish you had) and listen to some of the most intriguing stories from folks along the way.

Finally Deacon Matt and his buds are on yet another do-si-do with the GAP and C&O trails. If you’re an armchair adventurer, these folks offer ample opportunity!

Between reading their blogs, rinsing my bike shorts and boiling water for Mountain House meals I’m pretty busy over here.😂

So four nights near Bryce Canyon, three in Zion National Park and then on to Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park. By the way Nevada puts the “N” in N’Utah hence the Tour De N’Utah.

Currently we are camping at a Hipcamp (more on this later) where we get a nightly show of the setting sun when it retires for the day beneath the ridge behind us. The colors on the rocks across from our campsite are remarkable to watch so we position our camp chairs for the evening show.

This form of natural entertainment precedes the one the stars provide at night. Like Marfa, TX where we bicycled through last February, this area is also know for its dark skies and optimal opportunities to star gaze.

By day the pinnacles of weathered rocks called hoodoos keep us ooohing and awwwing as we cycle or hike paste them. The beauty of this place cannot be described in pictures or words. If ever you get the chance, visit southern Utah, you must!

So “hoodoo” we think we are? Just old grandma and grandpa over here trying to catch our breaths at this elevation as we cycle up hills and live outdoors relishing in its beauty and the kindness of others.

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NE Scramble: Day 12 and 13, Easton, MD to Wilmington, DE, 100 Miles | About Face

Riding Stats | Day 12, Day 13

After our windy 76 mile ride to Easton we walked to a nearby restaurant and on the way over, resolved to take the next day off because of forecasted hail, thunderstorms and more headwind.

By the time our bevvies arrived we’d already started looking at “what ifs”.

By the time our salad and burrito bowl arrived we decided to “about face”, schedule an earlier train out of Wilmington, ride just two more days and get home four days early. Done and done! In fact I’m writing this while enjoying local pizza with Tom on our deck watching the sun set.

We will miss riding on the east side of the Delmarva Peninsula but have visited many of those towns before when we ran marathons in Rehoboth Beach and near Ocean City. Plus, now we don’t need to ride all the way back to Philly where the traffic is all snarled up due to the collapsed I-95 interstate bridge.

Another plus… Tom gets back in time to play in a pickleball league. Yay!

Thanks so much for your prayers, encouragement, questions and comments. The year’s not even half over and we’ve got two bike tours under our belts. Time to tend to the garden, play pickleball and spend time with the fam!

Click on the image below to view more pics and vids of our last two days of riding and our journey home:

NE Scramble: Day 11, Bear, DE to Easton, MD, 76 Miles | Wheat-ies 💪🏻

Today was what ya might call a character builder. It was one of those days that we should have had an extra bowl of Wheaties or threw down an extra serving of spinach at breakfast. It wasn’t the elevation but the consistent headwind. All. Day. Long. For 76 miles, almost all of it on one road.

And when we weren’t crossing bridges over rivers in small towns we were riding among wheat fields. I had no idea Maryland had such a robust cash crop in grains. Apparently “The Old Line State” was known as the “Breadbasket of the Revolution” during our country’s fight for independence. The wheat fields today were pretty and all but they didn’t block much of the wind for us.😂

Today we marked off our eighth state on the tour as we entered Maryland. With thunderstorms and hail forecasted for tomorrow, we are contemplating a zero, nearo or a reroute. Stay tuned…

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NE Scramble: Days 9 & 10, Point Pleasant, NJ to Bear, DE, 142 Miles | Dela-WHERE?

Riding Stats Day 9, Day 10

If you ever need a micro lesson in northeastern states geography we suggest riding bikes up here. Delaware is where? Oh it’s south of Pennsylvania which neighbors Ohio which is just east of Indy. And the Delmarva (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) peninsula which we are cycling around now shows Maryland encroaching on Delaware’s southern coastline with a string of Virginia land tacked onto the bottom for good measure. Who the heck decided these state boundaries and how? I have questions!

We’ve now entered our seventh state on the tour (knocking off five new ones we needed) in just a week. Heck it took us 18 days to cross Texas last February on bikes. What a metaphor for life. Some things come easy, and well others ya work for harder.

Speaking of working toward a goal… does anyone recognize the steps behind us in the above pic?

Friday, June 9th was our 16th wedding anniversary and we celebrated by… you guessed it. Riding bikes! Pleasant Point to Cherry Hill, NJ was pretty near perfect rural riding with little traffic, wide shoulders and smooth pavement – about 98% of it. We were in such a rhythm we took only three pics all day.

However riding from Cherry Hill to Bear, Delaware via Philadelphia today was 98% stoplights which made for slow going until we got to Delaware. There were also some steps to navigate to get over the Delaware River.

We used Hipcamp to find digs for the night and landed on a most unique campsite: just behind a beautiful mansion on two acres.

And there are grass tennis courts marked for pickeball! Owners Peter and Karin built this lovely home in Bear and rent rooms out to travelers. They even have a cozy spot for tenters. They found themselves so busy they added two modern RVs that share a gigantic shade giving tree and a deck to enjoy outside time. Peter’s built this all, including the house. Karin is an elementary school principal (600 students) who hosts both a podcast and has a TikTok following of over 13k. The people we meet are hands DOWN the best part of any bike tour.

If you spent 30 seconds with Karin you’d get a sense of her passion and creative genius for kids and education, especially school administrator wellness. Plus they are a couple of entrepreneurs living a dream.

Finally someone who may or may not be living the dream… Meet Rocket, the domesticated raccoon pet of a couple just outside Delaware City who have had him since he was three months old. Rocket ya need to lay off the Dunkin’ Donuts, my friend.

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PS: Below is hint to the above “where are are we” question.

NE Scramble: Day 8, Fort Lee to Point Pleasant, 45 Miles | Riding The News

Riding Stats (20 ferry miles)

NEW York and back to NEW Jersey that is. What a great ride today! Skies were more clear, we crossed the George Washington Bridge on bikes without a hitch, scored some tasty street meat while waiting for the ferry and cruised the Jersey Shore for the first time.

The bike trail into New York down to Battery Park is bike friendly, scenic and a unique way to see some of the city.

Although we didn’t get into the meat of New York it truly is a great American city. The buildings, the people, the energy – amazing!

The SeaStreak ferry shuttled us back over to Atlantic Highlands in New Jersey and we cycled along the shore through Sea Bright, Sea Girt, Asbury Park and ended our day in Point Pleasant with dinner on the water recapping our day and planning for tomorrow.

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NE Scramble: Day 7, Goshen to Fort Lee, 65 Miles | Smoked

Smoked. That’s the word for today while riding to Fort Lee, NJ which is just 10 miles away from New York City, the city presently considered to have the second worst air quality in the world due to raging wild fires in Canada.

Although ”sunny” with considerable wind, the haze and smoke worsened as the day went on and we got closer to Fort Lee.

Early in the day we explored an old cemetery just off the rail trail.

Later we rode though some of the most beautiful scenery yet in Sterling Forest and Harriman State Parks.

There were just enough rollers to keep our attention and the descents pushed us forward at wicked fast speed.

It was just after we had lunch at a neighborhood deli that we noticed more smoke and less people out and about.

We cycled right along the Hudson River through Piermont yet the nearby Hudson River was nearly invisible due to the increasing smoke. It’s a good thing Captain Sullivan didn’t have to land his plane on the Hudson River on a day like today.

Bicycle Route 9 paralleled Palisades Parkway and took us into New Jersey, another new cycling state for us! And we weren’t the only cyclists out. Apparently this is a well traveled cycling route, even on days when the AQI is high.

So tomorrow we jump out of the frying pan and into the fire so to speak when we cross the George Washington Bridge, ride through NYC to Battery Park and then to Pier 11 to jump on a ferry and start heading to Philly and the Delmarva Peninsula for the next leg of our journey.

We plan on getting an early start to get the heck outta here!

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NE Scramble: Day 6, Gardiner to Goshen, 30 Miles | Best Pivot Ever

Riding Stats: 1st 2nd

Singing birds woke us up at 5:20 this morning and when we got out of our tent, we found our long distance touring buddy Marianne had already packed up and gone making nary a sound. We saw later on her Strava account she stopped in and toured the Eleanor Roosevelt museum and put in more miles than we did.😂

Surprisingly just outside of Gardiner, NY the trail turned to single track and it unexpectedly began raining.

And then it started thunderstorming so we ducked into Kacey’s for some breaky burritos, wifi and a new game plan for the day.

We had a 70 miler planned with 10 miles already in. As I was trying to decide what kind of peppers were in the burrito so I could replicate the recipe at home Tom looked up after checking his phone and said, “You know, Goshen is actually only 20 miles away.” I immediately stopped thinking about the recipe and how much time riding in the rain that shortcut would save us. Using Google bike routes and Ride With GPS he’d found a 40 mile shortcut (that’s right a 40 mile shortcut) on semi bike-friendly roads.

Sometimes ya change the game plan. I think they call it a pivot. 😂

So bad news is we missed some of the Hudson Valley scenery we were looking forward to seeing. Good news is we finished early at our intended destination, got laundry done for the first time in a week and ate a couple of Angus hamburgers that were some of the best we’ve ever tasted.

When we were walking into town we kept noticing the haze. Surely this wasn’t pollution from NYC. It reminded Tom of when we cycled through the forest fires out in Montana when riding the Great Divide. It’s a peculiar blanket over the sun. Sure enough our friend Dan enlightened us… forest fires in Canada are throwing smoke our way.

More good news is without camping options the next few days, we won’t be exposed to poor air quality at night as we cycle through NYC, Philly and the Delmarva Peninsula during the day.

Seems like there is always some good news if ya look for it! Hope your day is full of good news. 😊

Chick on the image below to view more pics and vids:

NE Scramble: Day 5, Millerton to Gardiner, 70 Miles | Live Every Day

Ok normally I don’t drink Bourbon slushies out of Smart water bottles but today was that day.

It was the end of a warm, 70 mile day, some of the body parts are starting to feel the grind (and I don’t mean the legs). The slushy was cold and the distillery was right across the street from our campground so… #nobrainer

The food truck drew us into the parking lot yet once we went inside the 200 year old Grist Mill and met Jasmine, we were more intrigued with the story of the distillery and the mill than the taco truck outside.

Oh back to cycling… it was an Oreo cookie kind of day with ten plus miles of rail trails on both ends of our ride today. Rail trails mean less climb so we weren’t mad about that. There were however, a couple big ones where I told myself there would be reward at the top if I reached the top without stopping.

We crossed the Hudson River today cycling over the second longest pedestrian bridge in the world. Originally a double track railroad track, it was completed in 1889, which to me is an incredible engineering accomplishment for the times. It was converted to a 1.25 rail trail in 2009 and is a small part of the Empire State Trail.

Pictured below is one amazing woman. Meet 72 year old Marianne. She rode her bike from Los Angeles, hopped on Route 66 and cycled to Chicago. From there she followed the Adventure Cycling Map to Washington, DC via parts of the C&O and GAP trails and now she is heading to Maine on the Atlantic Coast Trail where she will attend a fiddler’s conference.

No, she doesn’t carry her fiddle but does carry a bear cannister for her food on her recumbent bike. As a matter of fact a little black bear loped across the street in front of her just yesterday. But I digress… She will return home to Portland not by plane, train or automobile, but by riding through Canada. And she’s a solo rider, averaging about 45 miles a day.

She said she comes by her love of travel and the outdoors honestly. Her mother, who has now passed but lived well past 100 years of age, hiked the Pacific Crest Trail before it was even called the PCT. What a fascinating woman.

Tonight we camp by the Wallkill River and tomorrow’s route guides us through more of the scenic Hudson River Valley. We should be peddling through the Big Apple on Wednesday. 🏙️

Thanks so much for the follow, the questions, comments and of course the prayers that we count on.

Oh, and someone was asking about the what, where and why’s of this ride. You can find the quick answer to that here.

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NE Scramble: Day 4, Windsor Locks to Millerton, 67 Miles | If We Had Nickel