Neverending Summer

If only I had the means to make a go of nonstop Summer fun. Chase the sun on the horizon, wherever it takes me on this continent. There's still some juice left to this Summer though! This, despite the fact that you have to hear a handful of times each day that the demise of Summer is moments away. No, there is still a lot to do, and plenty of decent weather to do it in.

Local hike in Delaware Water Gap, a spot known as Dianna's Bath

Walking the "stepping stones" path in  Del. Water Gap 

The days are getting shorter in a very noticeable way, however. The trips we take at this point are candidates for "last of the season" affairs. It's mid-September, and it feels like there hasn't been that much outdoor fun this Summer. And then I start going through photos and find that it's truly the opposite. That's a big part of why I write these things.

 Glen Run Nature Preserve

DWG Loop

As we get into late August, there's a discernible change in lighting in my snapshots. Most of my rides are in the evenings, out of necessity. Like a low-fidelity time-lapse, the light slants more and more as we go. I'm just now beginning to pack my lights, and had to fire the helmet mount up two days ago.

Trailhead pack-up at Glen Run

There's a distinct lack of kayaking in this post. Something's gotta give during a frenetic 2nd half of Summer. That's for another post that you'll see here soon, as the paddles were hoisted for a trip to Raystown Lake. I'll leave this post with a few more evening shots and the first appearance of bike lights this season.

 DWG Loop sunset

Glen Run Preserve 

How quickly the sunlight drops, not 20 minutes from the photo above 

SG38, AKA Camelback

Fourteen Days

This is apparently a newly significant span of time. 336 hours. Give or take a few. That's how long it's been between bike rides. I can't truly blame my job this time. We had another wild weather event in the Northeast US whereas it rained and thunderstormed for something like eight days in a row. There was a similar span of time prior to this that entailed eight days of 90-plus degree heat and humidity, which effectively grounded any fat tire adventures for me. I have limits.

The old local loop, AKA the backyard loop. The post-workday loop. The short loop from my garage, through the woods and back is 2.58 miles, give or take the accuracy of the Russian satellites. I had to bang some stuff out. Some mental demons, some weird thing in my thigh that made it feel like stone, which I attributed to inaction. Or a deadly blood clot. Getting older is a shitshow.

Oh, there were other adventures. There's been a few paddles, and you cannot discount their effect on the quality of life.

Delaware river with Tara

Looking north

July 13th, Tara and I put in a Friday the 13th paddle. Despite walking under ladders and owning a black cat, it was all good luck and weather. This was the final day of my staycation, which was mostly devoted to working on the teardrop camper renovation. You can see that here. Paddling was a good ending to the "work week".

We had another group paddle on July 21st with friends from the Tri-state area. The original plan was to camp overnight on the Delaware, but thunderstorms were threatening. Laziness was also threatening.

Group paddle support group

Tara in attack position

We paddled the section from Smithfield to Kittatinny, stopping at Shawnee Craft brewery for a few local beers and some small bites. I had a draft of their Mosaic IPA, which was tasy. This is becoming one of my favorite casual cruises, and you can't beat a six-pack of Apiarius to go.

Today is the last day of July, Summer is racing by. I'm hoping to rock the last official month of Summer with a rigorous schedule of rides and paddles. Sounds exhausting, but you gotta work to play.

-cheers

May to June Rides and Paddles

Time and events fly by too fast to get regular updates in, so let's get a post out there with roughly a month's worth of fair-weather activities.

Tara and I paddled our first kayak overnighter of the year on May 28th-29th on the Delaware River. The overall route was from the Bushkill access point to Smithfield beach. We essentially witnessed Summer arrive overnight, as the weather transitioned from temperatures in the 60's and cloudy the first day into the sunny 80's the next.

Tara looking back

Gray first day

Yet another hammock contraption to try out

Camp for the night at Hogback sites

2nd day cast off, always lighter

We camped at one of our favorite sites on the river, which is a roomy plot on the first bend of the Hogback. Going back in time a bit to May 14th, we had a nice group ride on Glen Run. We hit some singletrack that was new stuff to me. Here's the embedded map below.




The section that was new to me was fast and flowy, definiUnfortunately, this was my last ride for roughly two weeks. I came down with some kind of cold/flu/allergies that went on for 10 days, at least. Three of us on this ride ended up with the same affliction, makes you wonder if we were infected by some heinous alien fungus. Anyway, here's a shot of the group below.

I'm not affiliated with The Loft, but some of these folks are

I've sprinkled a few more rides in this month at Glen Run and my "backyard" dirt in the recreational area. On the latter, I finally hooked up on a ride with another local dirt pusher who showed off the super secret stash of singletrack in the park.

Trailhead at local stash

Fubars are niiice

Summer if full of steam, barreling along, almost every weekend is booked and the projects are piling up. I'll have to hold on and find the time to do as much of these fun-but-necessary-for-my-sanity activities as I can. If you drink 5 5-hour energy tubs, do you get an extra day?

-cheers

Let's Hit the Country Club!

Visions of visors, white gloves, golf carts and beers in the sun may be dancing in your head, but you've got it all wrong. OK, not the beer part, but the rest would be inaccurate because I'm just referring to the nickname of my home trail. I just laid my first tracks of 2018 on it last week.

New log obstacles arrive yearly 

 Finally, T-shirt weather

These particular trails are just around the corner from my house in the DWG National Recreation Area. It's a local stash sort of thing, so I won't post the map here, but it's probably out there in the ether somewhere. I did the extended shorty loop, which wrangled about 4.6 miles and 725 feet of total ascent.

There's a lot of debris along with a few new log obstructions, so it'll take a little bit of cleanup until it's got its summer shape back in place. That goes for me too!

April (snow) Showers

Mother nature has really jammed on the breaks regarding Spring this year. There were roughly five snow storms since I last posted on DWR in February. The last one squeezed in on April 2nd.

April 2nd snow... noooo

This was coupled with the rapid approach of the unofficial beginning of the Spring/Summer season: Bike 'n Brew with Edge of the Woods Outfitters. I was set to lead the 16-mile ride and I had barely rode at all during this not-so-young 2018. I mean outdoor riding, not just trainer "riding" (and I haven't been doing much of that either).

Finally, the mercury rose on April 12th, just two days before Bike 'n Brew, and I logged just my 2nd ride of the season. This was definitely my ride to shake the dust off, fitness-wise. I did 13 miles on the McDade: Hialeah to the park HQ and back.

DWGNRA HQ with the big rubber

The taco truck gets a gravel outing

I certainly had some rust to burn off. My legs creaked and burned for the first 20 minutes and my breathing was way off, but all this is akin to the fiddleheads making their crunchy emergence from the dirt and dried leaves of last Fall. Warmup ride accomplished.

Map of the Thursday 13-miler

Saturday for Bike 'n Brew brought the best weather you could ask for. It topped out at 85 degrees and was blazingly sunny. While the 16 miles from Shawnee Resort to the HQ and back kicked my ass, it went better than expected. The post-ride beer from Shawnee Craft was highly refreshing.

I only snapped one photo, too busy being "in the moment", as they say. There were about 150 riders this year, the largest collection yet of dirt rollers for Bike 'n Brew ready to kick off the season. I'll post the map for the ride below.

February Bike Rides

That phrase conjures layer upon layer of high-tech clothing, frozen toes, iced-up componentry and frozen snot. In reality, the mercury hit the 50's twice last week and will do so a few times this week. In case you've missed the posting date of this piece, it's mid-February. Apparently that's now a great time for biking!

I hit one of my local trails, the McDade Recreational Trail. It's a non-technical dirt and gravel trail that runs along the Deleware River and through the national recreation area. It's good for just getting out there and rolling, but not for gnarly riding. Sometimes that's just your groove. It's beautiful and relaxing - a good head clearing cruise. I snapped the photo above that captures some of the intoxicating Winter skyline.

It's that skyline and sunset, in fact, that are two reminders that this is still February, your Spring Fever be damned. The sun still sets early as your first reminder, so lights are a necessity if you're an after work rider. Secondly, the twilight skies are decidedly not Summer. The sun slices at an angle out of the West and fires its flares through the clouds as a warning that the night will indeed be cold.

-g

Delaware River Camping in the Kayaks

Just because you have a staycation lined up, it doesn't mean you have to lock yourself in the cloying walls of your house. Get out and camp or kayak... or both! My wife and I took vacation time for the first week of August, strategically timed before the onslaught of craziness that precedes the beginning of the Fall semester at the university I work at. We had some housework in mind, as well as trips to Ikea and Campmor planned. We also had a three-day, two-night river camping trip on our itinerary.

The trip we planned would traverse the part of the Delaware River in the "other" part of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area that we haven't paddled before. That is the section from Milford, PA to Bushkill, PA. We planned to use riverside camping spots defined by the park's official map, which can be found here. The fact that we live in Delaware Water Gap means we spend much more time on the section from Eshback access to Kittatinny access.

Day One

We awoke at the crack of dawn, all items packed and boats loaded. Just kidding, we arose at 9 AM and began to get our shit together. After coffee. I had gotten most of the gear out and ready in the garage previously, however. We also had our food planned and I mocked up the packing strategy for the two kayaks and the "tugboat" (more on that later). It came down to just packing it all.

We did this trip self-supported, so we left a car at the Bushkill access point and continued north together in the pickup with the kayaks. The trip from home to the Milford access point is about 30 minutes, so we began the unload sometime after 3:00 PM after screwing around all day. One element of time that gets underestimated or beguiling is the portage of people and kayaks along the river to accomplish these things.

It was a weekday, so we had the access point to ourselves. This allowed us to unload and drag kayaks, dry bags, cooking gear, some wood, tent, sleeping bags and numerous other things down to the water where we could sprawl all accouterments about willy nilly. This helps in packing, trust me. We hit the water around 3:45 PM.

Loading the boats was smooth enough, as we had just done an overnight river trip the week before along with my brother. The presence of the tugboat was a key factor. The lovingly-deemed "tugboat" is really a product called the Kayak Kaddy available from a sports outfitting company. See the image below for reference.

The first duty of the tugboat was to carry cold food. I'd need to stuff a cooler bag inside. You can use a product like the Icemule dry bags, but we ended up trying to find a solution the day before, in our typical fashion of last-minute. I found a good 'ol 16-can Coleman cooler bag at the local hunting and fishing outfitter. It worked because I could remove the rigid inside bucket and stuff it through the hatch in the tugboat. Once inside, I began to stuff kabobs, hot dogs, a 64 ounce block of frozen chili, a bottle of dijon, a 12-pack caddy of eggs, a bag of nine hard boiled eggs and two freezer packs in before zipping it up and stuffing it into the rear (rounded part) of the tugboat.

Once jammed rearward, it extended just a smidgen past the lip of the hatch. Most impressive. The rest of the space was used for cooking gear and various other items. I don't remember precisely, but items such as a folding bow saw, coffee peculator and grill spatula and tongs. Top it off with whatever else miscellany and the tugboat is highly effective.

We paddled about five miles during this first afternoon, coasting under the bridge you see above that carries route 206 from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. This section of the river is quite calm, devoid of rapids or very shallow sections. We were heading for Namanock Island to camp. The map listed four sites available for camping, but it plunged the indicator unreliably smack in the middle of the island. We decided to travel the eastern side of the island in order to find at least one site there. We did find one site - it had no shore, a steep embankment and overgrown vegetation and essentially no view of the river.

If you're camping on the river, you want a view of the river. Another rule is that if you're camping on an island on the river, walk around on foot to scope out other, better sites on the other side of the island. We did just that and found a great spot that would just require us to round the end of the island and paddle upstream for about 50 yards on the other side.

We set up camp, pillaged dead wood, drank wine, cooked kabobs, watched the sun go down over the hills to the West and meditated over the campfire with more wine until bedtime organically fell.

Day Two 

We awoke at the crack of dawn. Just kidding, that's a re-occurring joke that will never get funny. I made coffee on the percolator after emerging from the tent around 8:00 AM, and we sipped that while staring at the water and feeling the heat rise for a few hours. We dug into the hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, standing around the site eating salt and peppered eggs. We packed intermittently until we hit that point of no return, where you go into full bustle. Everything jettisoned down the bank!

We probably shoved off around 11:00 AM. The daylight in the photo above backs up that theory. Had we known that the day's trip would be quite a bit longer than expected, we would have certainly busted a move earlier. In the end, we spent a long, hot and humid time on the river during the hottest part of the day. Part of that trip was traveling through Dingman's Ferry and the toll-bridge of its namesake.

The Dingman's Ferry bridge is a quirky toll-bridge with a wooden slat surface. It's quite unique to paddle under while vehicles consisting of several thousand pounds of metal drive across, rattling the boards above your head. We took a break at the Dingman's access point just after the bridge and refilled our water and wolfed down snacks under a tree while the sun blazed.

Our next target camping spot was ideally at the Jerry Lees sites, which were 7-8 miles downriver. We scouted the Hornbecks sites anyway, since several hours of paddling in the midday heat was a sweaty endeavor. I was looking for a good site with a decent swimming spot down below. The Hornbecks sites didn't work out. While spacious enough, not all had a good view of the river and the swim spots were murky at best. We continued on without much deliberation. Camping there would make for a longer trip for day three anyway.

We'd essentially pinned ourselves to the Jerry Lees sites. According to the map, those were a few miles downriver, so we kept our eyes peeled on the western shore, even through some rapids that were more frequently appearing. Hot, sweaty and tired, we increasingly just wanted to make camp for the day. It was late afternoon at this point. After a few sections of rapids, we came across the non-mistakable signs of a campsite on the shore. This was about right for the location of the Jerry Lees sites. We struck shore and investigated, but it appeared like these sites were decommissioned. No fire pit, no signage. It became apparent later on that the map wasn't updated. I took a dunk anyway, since I had accumulated several hours of sunlight and sweat and felt like this could possibly be the last chance until I got home.

We moved on. Perhaps the sites were just a bit down the river. We kept this optimism close to heart until we rounded a slight bend and realized with wide eyes that we were at the Eshback access. We were only four miles away from the endpoint. Motivations changed quickly here as we realized we would stake our night's claim in the waters just a few miles upriver from our destination. At least we knew these sites still existed, as we were back on home turf, so to speak.

The swimming is better here anyway! Less foot-sucking mud, and the water had cleared even more after the recent storms. We camped on an island within a mile of our destination at the Bushkill access point. It was roughly 6:30 PM, we knew this was the last stop. Aware that we had a short paddle the next day, we quickly set up camp in the space that was a bit off the river and took our camp chairs and wine down by the river to watch the sun go away another night, The photos above are within this moment, as we sipped wine and watched a few river stragglers slide by on this languid piece of the Delaware. We finished the night again with a campfire and heating up the chili on the camp stove and the brats on the fire, along with watching the fire burn down with whatever wine we had left.

Day Three

It was hardly a day at all. I made coffee again, just to prove we are human, after all, and relaxed at the site while drinking coffee, reading and indulging in that idle chat you have once you get into a good outdoor kick. We packed like reckless fiends and shot our boats out onto the water for the 15 minute paddle to Bushkill access. There was scant time to experience anything here, but I took a few photos nonetheless.

And now we were back to driving. Bushkill to Milford. Back to Bushkill to load the boats and gear. Back to our real home. Home, but not before stopping at the deli near the entrance to the recreation area. There was this customary post-camping hunger that we all feel. A little dehydrated, a little sun-crisped, a bit wild-eyed and sleep-deprived. I'll unabashedly admit I picked up a foot long turkey sub to go, which I devoured at home.

Getting home feels a lot better when you get out.

[g]