Although I had planned do a weekend in Cape May the weather forecast and my inability to find a decent hotel made me rethink my plans. Instead I decided to do a ride to the high points of Atlantic, Gloucester, and Camden counties. When I planned out the route it seem like a stupid ride. In order to hit the high points I had to do a double back in order to not go on any major roads and keep the ride around 60 miles.
We started from a park in the middle of Hammonton which had a nice small lake as seen above. I was joined today by Jim, Laura, Jack, Joe and Dave. I was surprised to see Dave since he has been having some problems with his ticker but said that he would be fine in the flat lands we would be riding.And he was although he still complained a lot.
Our first high point was about 4 miles into the ride. This was the high point of Atlantic county which is suppose to be a whole 150 feet but I actually had 160 feed on the GPS.
As you can see Dave is faking being tired after the actual climb which was probably all of 40 feet from the staring point. From here we found some really straight roads as we headed towards Williamstown. When I say straight I mean that the road did not turn by more than 0.001 degrees for almost 5 miles.
Our second high point was in Gloucester county. This one was on a semi busy road north of Williamstown.
The high point was by the Life Church (LifeisHere.org) who's mission is to use religion to help heal sick, addicted, depressed and troubled people. I had 194 feet even though the actual high point which is just to the left of the road is listed at 180 feet. I think some of these high point are higher than expected because the construction of the roads add a few feet to the surface and makes the surrounding area a little higher.
From the Gloucester high point we back tracked down the way we came and made it to a Wawa in Sicklerville for our only stop. There are not a lot of places to stop in this area so I had to put the stop at mile 20.
A few more really straight roads later we were in Atco and heading to our third high point in Camden county.
The actual high point is in the woods behind a large development. The are still building houses in this development so we have to go through some construction to get there. The path behind Jim, (who always has to take a picture of me taking a high point picture), leads to the actual high point. I had 213 feet here which is really close to the official 219 feet. On NJBikeMap.com Dustin actual has the highest road a few miles away at 167 feet which I think is an error since there are a lot of higher roads near the actual high point.
For those who are observant you noticed that Dave was not in the Camden high point picture. This was kinda my fault. On our way up the hill my saddle bag fell off the bike as it does once a year. Jim managed to swerve around it and Dave missed it with his front wheel but caught it in his back wheel causing him to skid but luckily not fall.
The skid which wasn't that long wore his tire through the canvas and produced a large hole in the tire. Dave and Laura tried to repair the tire with a boot and duck tape but although it held the tube in it was not really safe to ride that way. That meant we had to leave Dave at the side of the road with a promise that we would remember where he was and retrieve him later.
We made a quick 18 mile run back to the start for a total ride of just over 55 miles. Jack and I with Joe following went to retrieve Dave. After which we had to find our way home. We ended up going up Rt 73 which was full of traffic then got on 295 and made it back to Bordentown.
So although we had a stupid route and a mechanical problem we did check 3 more high points off the list. The next set of high points will be a lot high and require a lot more climbing.
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