We’ve been watching the weather forecasts since it is supposed to rain starting tonight for a few days. Looks like some of our outdoor activities may be curtailed temporarily. Tomorrow we’ll probably go into town somewhere to load up on supplies and to find a laundromat, as the laundry bag is getting full.
Since today was our last nice day for a while, we decided to kayak the Delaware River. We chose Smithfield Beach as the starting point and the Kittatinny Point Visitor Center as the takeout point, for a distance of about 7 miles. It took a bit to figure out the logistics of this since the starting and ending points were on the opposite side of the Delaware River and the only crossing was the Interstate 80 bridge. But I discovered that the Appalachian Trail crosses the river on this same bridge, so there is a pedestrian lane for all the hikers.
So we spotted a bike at the visitor center and drove to Smithfield Beach. We were told that, on summer weekends, this is an enormously popular starting point, and the parking lot fills up by 10am. Today however, there were all of four cars in the parking lot, and that included the truck and trailer for the guys mowing the lawn. The parking lot will fit somewhere around 350 cars.
We put in at about 10am and had the river mostly to ourselves.
Looking at the Delaware River from our campsite last night, I got the feeling that it was a lot like the Grand River back home: wide and slow. The water appeared to drift lazily along with barely perceptible movement. After we were on the water, however, we realized that this river may be wide, but it is not slow. The size of the river makes it seem slow, but looking at the bottom through the water, we could see the rocks and plants moving by us at a surprising clip, and I measured the speed without any paddling at 3 miles per hour. Pretty good for a wide and slow river. One section was a bit more swift, with the ripples and currents to match, and it registered 8 miles per hour, which seems like rocket speed in a kayak.
It was a beautiful day for a paddle, and before we knew it, nearly 2.5 hours had passed and the takeout point was upon us. We beached the kayaks, ate lunch, and I took off on the bicycle to get the RV.
I guess I can say I hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail on this trip. However, it was the pedestrian lane on the Interstate 80 bridge, and I was separated from the trucks barreling by by an eight-inch thick concrete barrier, only about two feet tall. So this really didn’t give a good representative feel for the AT. The bridge is nearly a quarter mile long, and you are required to walk your bike, so I was up close and personal with the trucks for some time.
It took over an hour to retrieve the RV, 7.7 miles by bicycle, and 18 miles back by RV, mostly through twisty turny roads. So it was mid afternoon by the time we had everything loaded up and ready to go again. We drove south for a half hour, then stopped at the Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center, a park with a bunch of trails that appears to be very popular with runners. We hiked a couple miles of trails, just to stretch our legs, then headed south again.
Deb is always looking for interesting things to do. One thing she ran into was a dinner cruise on the Erie Canal, on a boat pulled along by mules. What a gas that would be. Unfortunately, their web site said that, due to circumstances beyond their control, all dinner cruises for this weekend were cancelled. We seem to have a lot of that on this trip. Being at a spot on the very day it is closed.
We also thought walking on the Hoover Mason Trestle in downtown Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is a former narrow gauge elevated railroad that carried iron ore over the blast furnaces in town. Many of the rusted furnaces still stand, so it’s kind of an overhead view of history from the railroad turned walkway. However, at 4pm on Friday afternoon, traffic was slowing down all over the place, and the thought of piloting an RV into downtown in that mess was not appealing, so we continued to our evening destination. These cool things will just be added to the list of what to do if/when we return here.
Our destination for the evening was a Boondocker’s Welcome host in Pottstown, PA. It’s really hilly here and we are perched next to a barn at the top of a hill. Our host gave us instructions on how to avoid the super steep hill and the wonky turns suggested by Google Maps, which we appreciated. They were rather scary when we first drove in here. We used these instructions when we went out a little later this evening for ice cream in downtown Pottstown.
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