I wanted to check out the Swatara Rail Trail for quite some time – it is a mixture of rail trails and abandoned roads near Jonestown, PA. I saw the trail while driving home from another near by trail, the Stone Valley Rail Trail. Part of my research in checking out new trails is going on Google Maps to see where the trail starts, ends and what else is around it. I noticed at one end of the Swatara Rail Trail there was a KOA campsite and you could cycle (or walk) right from camp to the trail which really intrigued me. So I picked a weekend in August, packed up my camping gear, Kevin, JoJo and my nephew and we headed out for a weekend of adventure!
Continue readingCycling
Lackawanna River Heritage Trail
Kevin was invited to be in a wedding which was going to take place near Scranton, PA. When you are in a wedding, you typically have things that you do all day with the bridal party – and I didn’t know anyone else that would be attending this wedding. So I started looking for things that I could do close to the hotel that would take up some time until the wedding would take place. I thought about taking a tour of Scranton to see all the places The Office was filmed, except there are none. Then I noticed a bike trail really close to the hotel we were staying at – The Lackawanna River Heritage Trail. BINGO.
Continue readingBike Train: Jim Thorpe – White Haven PA
I was undecided what I wanted to do for my birthday weekend this year. The weather hasn’t been the greatest lately so that took out camping. I really wanted to go see some waterfalls, but a lot of places I looked up were either closed for the season or the trails were washed out due to all the rain we have been having. Then something made me think about the bike train in Jim Thorpe. After a quick search, I found out it was the last weekend for the year. I gave Pocono Biking a call with serious doubts I would get any tickets. They are a company we have used NUMEROUS times before for the shuttle, but never had a chance to take the train. Either way, you park in Jim Thorpe and take the train (which runs about once a month spring – fall) or take a shuttle (which runs daily May – Oct and weekends only in April & November) to White Haven, PA. Then you hop on your bike and cycle about 25 miles along the Lehigh Gorge Trail back to Jim Thorpe.
To my surprise there were a fed tickets available for the train! I claimed tickets for as many family members as I could put in a car. Bikes, trains, and waterfalls – what better way to spend a day?!
Tour De Donut 2018
I’m not quite sure how I stumbled upon the Tour De Donut bike ride that is held in Troy, Ohio, but I knew I wanted to participate. Although I am not a huge donut fan, I AM a fan of riding bikes in quirky and fun group rides. For the Tour De Donut you pick the distance you want to ride from 3 choices. The longer the ride, the more donut stops where you attempt to eat as many donuts as possible before continuing the ride. Each donut you manage to eat takes 5 minutes off your final ride time. Then there is the bonus stop for a special Glazer donut which takes 10 minutes off your ride time per donut.
Weirdest Bike Ride EVER
A few weeks ago I drove to visit my family – and my new nephew who decided to surprise everyone and come early (about 2 months). After meeting my new adventure buddy in training in the NICU, I asked my other sister and mom if they wanted to go for a bike ride. We went to pick up their bikes and they decided to ride around the driveway a bit – because it had been awhile since they took their bikes out for a ride. Unfortunately that’s where the ride started to go downhill.
Happy 4th of July!
I noticed a group was putting together an early morning group ride on the 4th, so Kevin and I decorated our bikes and cycled over to the start to join in. The ride was going to be about a 6 mile out and back, but so many people showed up that they added the option to keep going making it 10 miles. Despite the extreme heat I think everyone opted to do 10 miles. Kevin and I cycled from home which added about another 7ish miles to the trip. We ended up being the only ones having flags on our bikes which sort of surprised me, but I didn’t care – I was just happy to see so many people out for a ride!
Presque Isle State Park
I couldn’t believe my luck – Mother Nature was FINALLY letting me have a rain free weekend so I could go camping! When we saw how beautiful the weather was going to be we packed our camping gear and began the long drive to Presque Isle State Park in Erie, PA.
Cycling Assateague Island
We were rained out of our camping trip, but I happened to see that the weather at Assateague Island was supposed to be nice Saturday until the evening. We were able to book a last minute pet friendly hotel in Ocean City, NJ so we loaded up the bikes along with the Doggyride and the 3 of us headed to the beach!
Ironton Rail Trail
The camping trip Kevin and I were planning in western PA got rained out (surprised? not really…). Kevin had taken the day off work, so we decided to head up to a rail trail I recently found out about in eastern PA to get a bike ride in before the weather turned. Continue reading
Wine & Wheels
I noticed that my favorite winery was very close to the Schuylkill River Trail so I decided to see if I could get a group together to cycle to it. I called it the Wine & Wheels bike ride, and although the trip was spur of the moment I had 8 people interested in joining in. I picked the Brentwood trailhead which was a little over 3 miles away from Ridgewood Winery and told everyone to meet there. Due to various reasons everyone dropped out except my friend Tracy. We decided to go a little earlier because rain was expected in the late afternoon. We also decided to meet at a spot further up the trail to make our ride a little longer – the day was so gorgeous that it was an easy decision to cycle the whole way there!
blisters and bug bites 