Spring is in full bloom and since we have had no real rain for past couple of weeks the pollen has been extremely high. I'm not sure if it is lack of rain or the mild winter but the blooms on the flowers are lasting a little longer this year. Usually the flowers on our dogwood tree last 4 or 5 days but its been over a week and they still look good. Although the weather for Saturday was suppose to be cloudy with chance of showers it actually was warm and sunny when I went out to get ready for the ride so I took a few nice pictures of the dogwood.
Saturday's ride was one of my easier hilly rides called the Raritan River Ramble which I do ever year as I'm working my way up to climbing some real hills. This is a nice ride that takes the easy way up and over the Sourlands then zig zags along and over the Raritan River a few times before heading back to the canal where it starts. I usually don't get a big crowd when I do hilly rides but I ended up with 14 people.
This rides keeps off most of the busy main roads and winds through a lot of scenic farmland like Pine Bank Rd near Redington. We went past the Redington Reform church where my wife's cousin is buried. My wife was very close to her cousin so they were like sisters. Although the funeral was over 6 years ago we had never to back to visit the grave or see the tombstone so I took a slight detour through the graveyard to get a picture of the stone for my wife.
The rest of the ride was fun as we worked our way back towards the canal. The last part of the ride is a straight 3 mile shot down Canal road. Although most people headed straight back a few of us decided to tackle Coopermine to do one more climb and a nice downhill hill. It was a good way to end the ride.
