This was a little tough to lay out due to several constraints. The first and foremost was the dearth of hotel accommodations along what we considered to be the most desirable route (i.e., west of the I-95 corridor). That was going to require either a long second day going northbound or a swing east and making it four days. We decided on the latter.

Before we did that, however, we pinged a few Warmshowers hosts to see if there were possible accommodations that would make it a three-day tour, but those didn't seem to work well either. The distance to New Hope is about 200 miles, so three days at 65 would be nice but also our upper limit (at least northbound). So we went with hotels and four days.

Day 1 to Towson, MD (Comfort Inn)
Day 2 to North East, MD (also a Comfort Inn)
Day 3 to King of Prussia, PA (Hampton Inn)
Day 4 to New Hope (Happy at his conference camp, and Tom and Jerry at a Warmshowers host)

The return is a bit different. Jerry will bike to Trenton on Monday, the 22nd, and hop an Amtrak train home (he will be on his Bike Friday and will be able to hand-carry it on). Happy and I will part company with Jerry that morning and make for Exton, Pennsylvania and then make a major 83-mile push the next day back to Towson, Maryland. Happy says he's game. We will see!

And the reason for the hard push? I want to ride both crossings over the Susquehanna River, a major bottleneck for cyclists along this corridor. Until recently, only the US-1 (Conowingo Dam) crossing was available. But the Maryland Transportation Authority (MTA) has devised a scheme that now allows cyclists to use the US-40 crossing as well. My goal is to try both! So US-40 northbound and US-1 southbound, which sort of dictate that longer day.

So here is our hopeful route northbound:

And our return route, which is similar on the first and last day but a long haul on day two.