Falling Leaves

 

This week I continued with my mini bike vacations. This Friday I took the day off and decided the check out the Paulinskill Trail which is near Blairstown NJ. This is a 27 mile long rail trail along the Paulins kill (kill is Dutch for creek). I had not done this trail before but my nephew had hiked it a few weeks ago and it looked interesting.

It was another hour and a half drive to the start. It was cloudy with a little fog along the way but when I got to the starting point it was just cloudy and the fog had retreated to the surrounding mountains. It is just after peak foliage so there were good color in the trees even thought a lot of leaves are already down. 

 I got Jack, Pete, Ricky and Laura to join me. The trail map said there was a parking lot at the beginning of the trail but we couldn't find it so parked at a ball field about a mile away. 

The start of the trail was a little rough and rocky with a little mud and Laura took a spill on one of the muddy parts but we kept going and after a mile or so it got better especially after we passed the Paulinskill viaduct.

I couldn't really tell what the surface was as it was covered with a few inches of leaves. The trail is mostly through the woods along the creek but there were a couple of spots where we got a view of the mountains and some fall colors

The trail goes next to the Blairtown airport and through the backside of Blairstown. At the north end of town there is a dam and a scenic lake where we stopped to take a few pics

 

 

There were also a few interesting bridges along the way.

At just over 12 miles out Laura and I decided to turn back as I wanted to get back to go visit my father. Ricky, Jack and Pete continued to head up the trail for about 10 miles.

On the way back Laura and I stopped a few times for some more pictures. I tried to get some good pictures of the Paulinskill viaduct but it was really hard to get a picture through the trees.

Its an impressive structure architecturally and has some interesting features as profiled in Weird NJ. The main feature is that the bridge has internal tunnels use to inspect the bridge. The bridge was build in 1908 for a rail line that ran between Scranton PA and New York. The rail line went out of service in 1979 so the bridge is abandon and its out side and internal tunnels are covered with graffiti some of it satanic in nature. Since the bridge was abandon it has been a popular place for teens to hang out and party so the state police patrol this area often. 

This trail is a little rougher than the Columbia trail or the D&R Canal trail but it was a very scenic trail so it was a good way to spend a day off.

 

Zoo Cruise

 

We haven't been able to do any bike vacations this year so instead we have done some local rides to parts of the state we haven't been too in a while. This Saturday we headed down to Bridgeton which is in the deep southern part of the state. There are a lot of quiet flat roads in this area in and among the farmland that makes New Jersey the Garden State. Down in this area here is also the Cohanzick Zoo. Its a very small zoo and will take you all of 10mins to walk through but its worth the diversion if you are in the area and gave us another reason to take the hour and 20 min ride to get to there especially since we all got nothing but time. I got most of the crew to join me included Laura, Jim, Pete, Jack and Ricky.

Bridgeton was one area covered in my Road Biking NJ book and I called the ride around the Bridgeton area the Zoo Cruise because as part of the ride it visits the zoo. We also stopped here in 2015 as part of our high point rides. The ride we did today was sort of a combination of the two with a few new roads thrown in. This is a very rural area filled with farmland, small lakes and a few grouping of buildings that they call towns. 

We started the ride going into a stiff north west wind which made the hill we were climbing seem worst than it really was. We passed by Rainbow lake and Parvin lake on our way to the high point of Cumberland country which at 140 feet is hard to even find. From there we wound our way through a lot of open farmland to Alloway where we stopped at a general store. The southern part of the state is a lot redder than other parts of the state and the sign on the door of the store made it clear that the owner didn't agree with Govern Murphy's mask mandate. 

We continued on some more quiet roads and eventually got a good tail wind as we headed south along some rivers and swamp land not far from the Delaware river. We did have a few small hills to climb towards the end which felt harder than they should of but then we got another good tail wind to push us back to where we started. 

After the ride we took a walk around the zoo. They have some small marsupials and lemma but the main attraction is the lion and the tiger and the bear. I had bought a new gaiter for Halloween. I like the SweatVac Shapshifers as they have two layers and are a simple mask I can easily pull up when needed when I ride. They also have some cool patterns. I got the tiger one because that is my favorite animals. I know gaiters are not the best mask so when I know that I'm going to be closer to people I put a surgical mask underneath it. 

Of course with a tiger mask on I had to try and get a selfie with the actual tiger.

I took one with my phone which came out okay but Ricky took the one at the top of the blog which is a better close up. Here is a better picture of the actual tiger.

I didn't get a good picture of the bear as he was laying in his hammock and was just a ball of fur.  

Last time I was at the zoo I got a good picture of the people riding we me in front of the (plastic) Gorilla. I was going to try and do a similar shot this time but with the Gorilla roped off and social distant requirements we took a slightly different type of picture. 

 

For some reason giving the finger while taking a group picture has become our standard. This time Laura got to partake instead of being the recipient of the picture. I guess this is our FUCK 2020 picture.

Although it was a long day it ended up being a fun day and so we may do a few more of these type of excursions as a way to get some mini bike vacations in.

My Moonshot

 If you have visited this blog over the last few years you would see that beside my biking adventures I also occasionally post some stories of some of my astronomical endeavors. Recently because of some good weather I have been working on getting some pictures of the moon. One of my goals in life is to get a picture of the moon for each day of its 28 day cycle. I have been taking pictures of the moon for at least the last 10 years. Until recently I took the pictures by attaching a camera to the eye piece of my telescope. It wasn't easy to get the camera aligned with the eye piece and although I got a few OK pictures they never look close to what I actually saw through the eye piece. 

Last year I bought a Canon SX740 super zoom camera. With a 40x zoom I can get a reasonable picture of the moon by just putting the camera on a tripod and pointing it at the moon. The results are a lot better than I have been able to get before. The picture at the top is a Day 13 moon just one day before full. 

It does take a little practice to get a good picture and you have to have good conditions. I usually take 30 or 40 pictures at a lot of different shutter speeds to the settings to get the best picture. This I do some post processing to adjust the exposure and sharpen it. This past two weeks have been clear with no wind so I was able to get out 5 different nights. Here are the pictures I got.

Here is the Day 4 Moon

Here is the Day 5 moon

Day 8 moon

Day 11 moon

The interesting thing about is that each day is different as the terminator (the line between light and dark part) moves and highlights different parts of the moon and different craters. I currently have 5 out of the 28 days and got a couple of other days from pictures Laura took. 

It will still take me a while to get the rest of the 28. Getting the first few days means I have to go some where that has a clear view of the western horizon because the first few days of the new moon are only visible in the early evening near the horizon. Getting day 3 thought 15 I is easy because I can get that from my backyard on a clear night before I go to bed. Getting day 16 to 28 is harder because by the time the moon got above the trees it would be after midnight so I would have stay up past my bedtime. 

I'm sure somehow I will eventually get all the pictures and if I do I plan to put together a video like this one. That will not only show the waxing and waning of the moon but the libration (The twisting of the moon as seen from the earth)

Of course getting the rest of the pictures will take some time as it is rare to have weather as clear and calm as we have had for the past couple of weeks. However now that I have a camera that can get a take a good picture of the moon I can opportunistically get the pictures as weather and my schedule allows.