Since the weather has been so nice I decided to try to finish biking the on road section of the Conestoga Trail.  I asked my mom if she wanted to go with me because we would be going through a few more covered bridges and I knew she would like to see them – but she is very uncomfortable riding on the roads.  We decided to have my dad drive the route so we could see just how busy the roads were.  When we got to the end of the on road section we decided to bike back to Oregon Dairy (which is where I stopped my ride last time) and meet my dad there for lunch.  It seemed like we would be going down more hills than up.  There was a short on road section that we skipped because it was pretty busy, but we found a good place to pull over and jump on our bikes to start our journey!  Although some of the roads had a bit of traffic, for the most part we saw very few cars because we were on back roads in Lancaster County.  We actually saw a bunch of other cyclists and some horse and buggies!

The weather was just perfect and the flowers were blooming so we couldn’t resist snapping a ton of pics along the way!    We saw a lot of farmland, horses, roses in full bloom, and crossed through 2 covered bridges on this section of the trail.  We took our time and biked 5 miles.  We reached Oregon Dairy about an hour after we started.  My mom exclaimed “WOW we made good time!!” to which I explained if I did a 5 mile an hour pace for the MS City to Shore bike ride it would take me at least 16 hours to finish – LOL!  But it wasn’t a race, the day was beautiful and I was really proud of my mom for confronting her fears of on road cycling!  Here are a few pictures of our awesome outing:

Here is the cue sheet for this section of trail from the Lancaster Hiking Club (we did this section in reverse)

0.00	At intersection of Rtes 272 and 722 (Oregon Pike and Oregon Road) near a mini market, head south on Bushong Road. Turn right and cross bridge over Rte 222.
0.40	Turn right on Pinetown Road.
0.90	Turn left on Bridge Road and go through Pinetown Road/Bushongs Mill Covered Bridge. [Built in 1867, it is 132 feet across and spans the Conestoga Creek. In 1972 Hurricane Agnes heavily damaged the bridge, necessitating repairs.]
1.50	Turn right at stop sign onto Mondale Road
2.60	Turn right on Hunsecker Road.
2.90	Cross Hunsecker’s Mill Covered Bridge. [Built in 1848, this bridge was washed off its foundation by Agnes in 1972 and was repaired and replaced. 180 feet long, it crosses the Conestoga.]
3.50	Turn left onto Butter Road.
4.30	Turn left on Landis Valley Road.
4.81	At stop sign turn right, continue on Landis Valley road. If you turn left, that is the entrance drive to Perlman park.
5.00	Turn left on Route 23.

 

HAPPY TRAILS! 🙂