Pat and Sari's Honeymoon Bike Ride

Saturday, March 01, 2008
Springfield, PA to Stone Harbor, NJ
89 miles (89 total miles)

Our trip has finally begun! Friday night there was a forecast of 1-2 inches of snow, but Saturday morning started out 40 degrees and rainy. As we started (at 6:45 am), the rain stopped and it soon cleared up and turned into a beautiful, sunny day. Clouds came and went all day, the temperature was cool, and the winds were fairly strong most of the day. A few times we were lucky and had the wind at our back, but it was tiring to battle the winds all day.

Our house sitter, Therese, graciously got up early to take our picture as we left. Pat's mother, Eileen, also braved the weather to come out and take pictures of us leaving our street (Paper Mill Rd.) and heading up Baltimore Pike. We took Baltimore Pike into Philadelphia (about 10 miles east of us) and stopped at a diner for breakfast. Then we headed a few more miles east to the Ben Franklin Bridge, connecting Philadelphia to New Jersey. New Jersey, at least, was a lot flatter than Pennsylvania, but even the little rolling hills seemed hard with our heavy load.

We have taken the bike to the New Jersey shore a number of times before, but we were obviously in better "bike shape" then (plus we weren't carrying nearly as much stuff!). We rolled into Stone Harbor 11 hours later (8 hours on the bike) feeling pretty tired and sore. Tomorrow morning, we will do the ceremonial dipping of our bike wheel in the Atlantic Ocean before heading down to Cape May, across the Delaware Bay on the ferry, and into the state of Delaware.