BicyclePA Route "S" 40 miles section Profile. From Rt. 63 and Evans Rd in Gwynedd Montgomery County to Rt. 23 and Park Ave. in Elverson, PA
Altitude Gain calculate 2233 ft
SCU's profile of their Century
Altitude Gain calculate to 5121 ft
Long Island Bike/train 2000;
This years trip was a four day trip. We started from 30th Street Septa’s R7 to Trenton to connect with NJT’s to Penn station. Daniel Payne, Leigh Webber, Dan friend, Geoff Higgins and I met at 8:30 am to avoid the peak hours. Linda McGrane meet the train that we were on at Torrisdale station. Five loaded bicycles with out a call to customer service unnerve the SEPTA conductor. NJT and LIRR, however, took the bike in stride, two here, two here ect.
We arrived at Penn station in tine to catch the 11 o’clock train to Ronkonkoma, Dan And Geoff need to buy their bike permit. They miss that train but had lunch in Penn Station while we had lunch in Ronkonkoma. They arrived on the next train as we were finishing Lunch.
Jerome Allen of Staten Island Bicycle Club had talked with me about doing the trip but not the loaded touring. Jerome met us in Ronkonkoma and drove to the campsite.
Suffolk County has bike Hostel at many of their counties park. They are free, no reservation needed and offer one night stays. However, a call will let you know it’s condition, the camp office just point you to it direction. Southaven County Park is about 17 miles from Ronkonkoma. We arrived there with plenty of time to setup our tents in dry weather.
The director had alerted me to the fact that the Hostel was in disrepair and we would be given a regular campsite. The cooker started diner while the credit carder camper, biked to the nearest shopping center, about 4 miles.
The camp had showers and running water.
The next day we bike 27 miles to Indian Island County Park, near Riverhead and was pointed to it’s Bike Hostel, just a clearing, a fire pit and a bike rack, almost half mile away from the showers and other campers. There was a day use area with toilets close by.
After setting up camp four of us biked to Greenport against a strong head wind and return by almost the same route for a 42 mile fun ride. The ride was to uses the Shelter Island ferry to get to the South fork for a 65 mile ride, but time was a factor so we save that ride for the next time.
Sunday we woke up to dark skies. We were underway way about 9 am for the Orient point ferry and a 34 mile ride. We stopped for the credit carder to have breakfast and as we begun to ride again, it start to rain. Rain gear came out, we continued and we was able to arrived early for the 1 o’clock ferry.
We face a 40 mile ride to Devil Hopyard State park, beautiful place, water fall at its entrance, and great views. However, pump water and privy. It stopped raining as we got to camp. The credit carder were alerted to get food at the crossroad about 8 miles before the camp.
Dan, our wood person, plans to bring a bow saw on the next trip, gather fire wood. We devised levers to break the limbs to manageable sizes. The camp fire lasted until about ten. We saw some stars and reason that the skies were clearing. Not; It rained hard from about midnight to 5 am. All tents performed well.
Monday, we again awaken to darken skies but no rain. We did breakfast and was underway about 9 am. We cross the Chester ferry and had brunch in Deep River. It rained while we ate and stopped until after we had use Rt. 145 to get to US Rt. 1. It was a wet ride on all of Route 1 to Union station in New Haven. About 15 miles. We reserve space on the 4:10 pm Vermonter for us and in the baggage car to roll on our bicycle. The fair was slightly more that the three train at $44 plus $10 for the bicycle but worth the price to use one train all the ways to 30th Street.
The down side was that we had to zero in of one time, while the commuter train runs every hour. We thought we had plenty of time. A broken spoke that refused my truing efforts, which Leigh calmly brought into riding conditions, a flat tire and a draw bridge opening. Place us at Union station minutes before the train arrival.
It was a great trip with everyone asking for a repeat next year.
I get as much fun from mapping as riding. I used SA6 on my Libretto notebook to generate the route. I feed the directions that are copied to windows clipboard to a template that I made that convert compass direction to Left/Right to print out a cue sheet. I then upload routes to my eMap GPS that gets us to the two campsite and then the ferry to New London. Another route got us to Devil Haddon State Park and another to New Haven using Rt. 82, a inland route. Monday I decided to change to a shore route to New Haven. I had the Libretto with me, but no Printer. I uploaded the new route to my GPS and followed it.
I have the II+ and the eMap. From the news group that discuss handheld, most bicyclist use III+ or eMap. The group is: sci.geo.satellite-nav
I use Delorme SA 5 and 6. You can set the road preference to avoid certain road. When you right click on a start and finish a route is generated that may be what you want one way. If not right on a road you want, right click on a road that you want to uses. Select "Via" and create another route. Continue until you like what you get. A return route has to be created, this program don't like circles.
To upload maps in to a Garmin, their map is needed, MapSource. There are three versions. The route generated in Mapsource R&R has to be right click at every turn. once uploaded, you have a complete route up to about 100 turns, about 30 miles. I am working on a template to convert it's numbered compass reading to Left/Right. I have loaded that route into my Garmin then load that into SA6 to get a route there that will make a cue but with truncated street names.