We started in Allentown which is only 9 miles from my house so I decided to ride in and was joined by Jim. This would make the ride 77 miles for me which would be a high for this season for me. Laura, Ed and another rider did me one better by turning the ride into a century.
We all meet at Bruno's Bike shop and were joined by Ron, Jackie, Mike M, Mary and Herb. The weather called for a chance of rain but the radar and forecast looked like it would hold off until the end of the ride. We did have a brief scattered shower at the beginning of the ride and right after the rest stop but it was a minor annoyance and didn't really affect the ride.
The first highpoint we hit was Ocean County which is near the the intersection of 528 and 539. I stopped where the highpoint was according to Dustin's map to get a picture of the GPS but instead of taking another nondescript picture of everybody standing on the grass on the side of the road I decided to take the picture at the New Egypt Speedway which is just down the road and makes a better picture.
We then continued into the pinelands and made our usual stop at the Wawa in Browns Mills before getting a little rained on our way to Pemberton. On the other side of Pemberton we made the climb up to Arney's Mountain which is the highest point in Burlington Country. We stopped for a picture by the Windmill at the corner.
I guess Mike was getting tired since he took a seat.
As you can see by the elevation both of these highpoints are nothing that would require any real climbing. The actual highpoints for both these counties are also pretty close to the road so although we did not get to the real high points we were with in site of both. When I got home I actually checked the numbers on Dustin's map. For Ocean country he had the elevation on the road on 204 feet and I got 191 which is with in the accuracy of my GPS. I actually think he has the highpoint in the wrong place I think it is on 528 just before the turn onto 539 because my GPS had 212 feet as the highest point. I think the reason for the difference is that Dustin is using USGS maps which doesn't take into account changes made to the terrain because of construction of the roads.
For the Burlington highpoint I think Dustin has a typo because he had it as 136 ft on the road where as I got 185 ft. Strangely the Burlington highpoint felt higher than the Ocean one probably because we had a small climb to get to it.
From Arney's Mount we made our way back using the normal event route. We had a slight tailwind which made the ride back easier. We ended up averaging 16 mph and after a brief stop at Allentown Jim, Laura, Ed, Mary and I rode back home.
I ended up with just over 78 miles and felt pretty good. I probably could have done a century but I'm glad I didn't
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