Since Cape May is an hour and a half to 2 hours away for most of us it made sense to make a weekend out of it. I had tried to do this during the summer but the difficulty in getting a reasonable priced hotel and everybody to agree on a date made me reschedule this to the early fall.
I got 5 people to join me for the weekend including Laura, Jim. Ed, Jack and his girl friend Dorthy. Many, many emails were exchanged to organize this trip which started from Bordentown where we all met. It was then an hour and a half drive down to the starting point at Belleplain State park. A few of us had done a century down here about 7 years ago but hadn't been back since.
We started from a parking lot at Nummy lake and headed out of the park the way my mapping software and NJBikeMap said there were roads. However the maps didn't match the actual roads so I just kept heading in the general direction of where I wanted to go and eventually made it back to the roads on the route. There are a lot flat and quiet roads to ride through mostly pine forests. Its not very scenic but does provide easy stress free riding.
The only scenic part was at the end of the Maurice River where there is a view of the bay and a small unnoticeable light house called East Point Light.
The route I had planned was a 62 mile figure 8 with a Wawa at the middle of the figure 8. We stopped there at 20 miles where we meet a bunch of dirt bikers on an 80 rally ride through the dirt and sand roads of the woods. We spent a few minutes talking to one of the bikers at the Wawa sharing experiences of our different forms of biking.
From there is was a 25 mile loop through Dividing Creek and Port Norris. Besides some more empty roads and pine forests there wasn't much to see here. The last time I was in this part I saw a lot of strange blue color lakes filled with some kind of chemicals but none were seen today.
There was one sand road I had to detour around as it wasn't marked correctly on the map. This brought us past a couple of people restoring an old 1940s train for reuse. We spent some time talking to them before moving on and going through the town of Buckshuem which is part of a song about strange sounding NJ towns.
At the Wawa Jack called Dorthy to see where she was. She had done a ride on her own since she didn't think she could keep up with us. It turned out she was just across from the Wawa heading back to the park.
From the Wawa it was a couple straight semi flat roads back to the start. Along the way we got to the actual high point of Cape May county which was suppose to be 60 ft but I got 86 ft on the GPS.
At the end we had 66 miles and maybe 600 ft of climbing. It sounds like an easy ride compared to what we have done but I still felt pretty beat at the end.
For the over night we went to Ocean City were we got a few rooms in the Biscayne Suite hotel. The rooms were spacious with a living room and large bedroom. For $90 a night it was better than expected although some of the bedding was little too mushy for good sleep. We had dinner at a decent Italian restaurant which was empty like the rest of the town. We took a walk on the boardwalk where there were only a few open stores.
Sunday we got up bright and early and headed to Smithville for our second ride of the weekend. The route I did was similar to the ride I usually do from Batsto I just changed the starting point. This was more quiet roads and pine forests. The only thing of note was that at one point my GPS said we were 100 ft below sea level. I'm not sure if I believe the GPS but it was just an excuse to take a "Low Point Picture"
By the time we got back we had just over 50 miles. We then said good bye and headed our separate ways home.
I still don't know if the theme of riding to all the county high points was a good idea or not. It did lead to some fun rides, a few stupid ones, and some rides that got us to roads that sucked. It is amazing to me that after 20 years of riding around NJ I can still find new routes and new roads to ride. I guess the best thing that came of this quest is a continued appreciation of how many good roads there are to ride here and a new set of adventures to remember and tell stories about. Of course the quest wouldn't have been as fun if I didn't have people just crazy enough to join me and share in the fun and pain of the adventure.
I am lucky to have a good set of friends who enjoy biking together and trying different things. We may come from different backgrounds, careers and riding experiences and we all may be a little odd in our own way but we enjoy riding together. I don't know if I will even have a themed set of rides again but I would like to try to do more trips like this next year because its always a good time.
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