Southern Soujour

The southern part of NJ offers a lot of quiet flat roads. I try to go down there once our twice a year for a ride just for a change of pace. This Saturday's weather was going be a good day for a ride with temperatures in the 70s with partly cloudy skies and a little wind. Okay is was more than a little windy. 

Luckily most of the insane posse were back from their vacations and most of them were able to join me for the ride. So we got the band back together again. We met at Bordentown and carpooled down to Fort Mott which is by the Delaware Memorial Bridge. 

We got to the starting point just before 10am and were soon on the road. The first 10 miles we zig zaged into the stiff north west wind as we went through the swamp and farmland. Once we got the wind at our back we quickly knocked off a bunch of miles until we were at Bud's Market, in Alloway, which is literally the only place to stop down this way

It is actually a nice stop and there is a empty house next store with a porch to relax on. When Laura rolled into the stop she said she had a problem with her rear derailleur. Ricky took a quick look at it but couldn't fix it. He did put it into a middle gear. You only need a few gears down south as there aren't many hills or rollers down south.

From Alloway we did head up hill a little to one of the highest point in Cumberland County but at 145 feet is not much of a climb. As required on one of my rides we ran into a dirt road. We could of course have gone around it but where is the fun in that. I had spent time the night before the ride using Google maps street view to make sure we stayed off dirt and sand but I guess I missed this one. The surface was hard packed sand so we were able to slowly make our way about a half mile until we found a real road again. 

Here is Ricky saying the scarecrow says the road is that way while Bob is seeing whether he can get an Uber to get him back to the start. We eventually found a road an another deli to stop at where Martin got some more local info. He was told that we should head down this road down to a boat ramp for a good view of the river. However after a 2 mile detour and no sign of the boat ramp we turn around.

We did get our first view of the Salem nuclear reactor. At this point we had at least 15 miles more or less directly into the wind which was still a constant 18mph with gust probably close to 30mph. It wasn't fun especially for Laura who didn't have right gears to spin into the wind. 

We took our time and stop to gather up a few times and slowly made our way back. Right after we went through Salem I cramped and had to stop and stretch for a few minutes before continuing back to Fort Mott park. 

 

On the  way back into the park I stopped to get a picture of the ugliest light house in NJ. This lighthouse is about a mile from the Delaware river and is a different type of lighthouse. It's beam intersects the beam of another lighthouse near the river to mark the center. The lighthouse by the river no longer exists so this lighthouse in no longer used. 

We were all pretty beat by the time we go back because of the wind. Still I'm glad we made the trip as it was a change of pace and another fun adventure with the posse.