Day 53 - Somerset to Totowa - Two Far 2022 - Reunion Bound (the long way around)

June 1, 2022

Day 53 - Somerset to Totowa

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Kerry will say that today was "fun". If you go by the "It's all fun" philosophy, then it was definitely Type 2 fun. We had some steep hills that required us to use the "four on the floor" propulsion method a few times. Kerry doesn't mind at all. I need to just accept that occasionally walking the bike is a normal part of touring on a recumbent tandem. He finds it easier to walk the bike by himself, so I really simply walk up the steepest hills.

Shortly after leaving our motel this morning (at the very civilized time of 10:30AM), we saw this quite ornate church.

This is the St. Andrews Ukrainian Orthodox Memorial Church.

Our biggest climb of the tour so far awaited us. We were riding up through the Watchung Reservation, a beautiful park that I think is owned by Union County, NJ. The road up to the park climbs 300 feet in just over one mile. The road is well paved and lined with nice homes. We alternately pedaled and pushed to get to the top. I didn't take any pictures on the way up. At the top is the Trailside Nature and Science Center. It is geared to school children and a really nice place.

The local Native Americans here when the Europeans arrived were the Lenape. I liked this list of New Jersey names which originated with them. I can heartily agree that Watchung is a good name for this place!

This was new information for both of us. Did you know that hawks were either accipiters or buteos?

We have seen something like this before, but I think it is really interesting.

It seems sad to think of a magnificent tree like this being cut down for lumber.

We biked through some of the park before descending much more quickly than we came up!

Ride with GPS does a pretty good job of routing us on appropriate roads. Occasionally, though, there are glitches. Leaving the park, we were to take Summit Road to the town of Summit.

This is part of Summit Road, per Ride with GPS.

A short walk got us just where we needed to be.

And, another example of a bike having an advantage over a car. The police officer sitting with his lights flashing at this road work area just waved us through. No detour for us!

We biked through the town of Short Hills. The residential streets were lined with large beautiful homes. I looked it up and found that Short Hills is one of the most affluent towns in the country.

We haven't mentioned the much maligned Jersey drivers. I didn't want to jinx us. We have had no bad experiences this year. We've had drivers stopped at traffic signals ask where we're going and wish us well. We've had lots of thumbs ups and big smiles. And today, we met Darwin. He gave us a friendly toot of his horn when he passed us, then pulled off the road walked out to meet us - giving us two big thumbs up. We had to stop and talk with him and get him in our journal. He's the example of Jersey drivers we're going to remember from this trip. (But we do have about 20 more miles in New Jersey tomorrow, so things could still change!)

Our day did have a happy ending. Within 10 minutes of checking into our hotel, a thunderstorm hit the area. We just looked out our window and smiled at the rain!!

Today's ride: 38 miles (61 km)
Total: 1,824 miles (2,935 km)

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