Escape to the Country 2: Pennsyl-mania

I was slow to get going this morning. My tentative plan was to be out by 8 AM, and I didn’t roll out until after 9. A couple people came up and talked to me last night, and it seems like word got around the campsite somewhat, since I had a couple people come up to wish me luck.

I worked my way westward and downwards to begin. This area of the state is known as the Great Valley, so while this was hilly it was more downs than up. This is also, notably, Amish country. I only saw one horse and buggy, but I saw a few other groups of Amish people throughout the day.

Randomly while biking one of these backcountry roads, I passed a bakery operating Fridays and Saturdays out of someone’s house. This was too great a coincidence to pass up, so I went in, talked to the owners a bit, and bought a delicious pair of lemon cheese danishes that I ate at the roadside.

I realized I actually forgot to fill up all of my water at the campsite, so I stopped in a coffee shop in Parkesburg, got something to drink, and filled my water. All of the coffee shops out here seem to be Christian.

I didn’t get photos, but the next section of roads had some lovely creek crossings and bridge underpasses.

I started following the Enola Low Grade Trail near Christiana. This used to be a rail line — old rail lines are very often converted to trails like this because they are existing rights-of-way that are long, straight, and flat, and this is no exception. The hills and valleys are evened out, sometimes mounding over the surrounding land and sometimes incised into rock. The eastern stretches of the trail, though, are unimproved, and mostly just grass or singletrack. That works fine for me, though.

Yesterday I noticed I was starting to get saddle sores, which is concerning this early in the trip. I tried to adjust my riding technique to put more weight on the pedals, which seems to have at least stopped it from getting worse even with a long day of riding. Another effect of this is that you go faster, which seems obvious now that I put it like that.

At Quarrysville the trail switches to be better-maintained, but still unpaved trail. A lot of people were out walking and biking. This got more true as the trail curved and followed the Susquehanna River, and for good reason. The views were spectacular, and dramatic blasted rock faces loomed on the other side. There was also a massive trestle bridge over the Conestoga River.

I followed roads up to Columbia, where I stopped and got a smoothie before crossing over the Susquehanna. This was the primary reason for this whole detour inland — the Susquehanna is actually very difficult to cross on bike, with the two more convenient bridges downriver sidewalk-less and very unfriendly. I also just didn’t hear great things about cycling around Wilmington, and could use the change.

After crossing, I started heading towards the campsite, south of the city of York. The road there does have traffic but has a wide, consistent shoulder and center turn lane for cars to give me space, so it was actually pretty comfortable. York itself was also better riding than I expected. I didn’t actually see the town center, but there were long, connected bike lanes on quiet roads.

Finally reached the campsite at about 6. A very long day of riding; 65.5 miles in all. Hot and humid, too.

Route Map

Missed the first ~6.5 miles.

Gallery

I’ll upload the images later.