From: Christine W <christineweir@hotmail.com>
Subject: Kiwis crossing USA: yahoo from Atlantic Ocean!!!
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 08:19:44 PDT
hi everyone
Yayy, yippee, yahoo, we are on the Atlantic Ocean coast!! On Tuesday at 4pm,
11 weeks to the day since we turned inland from Huntington Beach California,
we rode up the ramp at Bethany Beach in Delaware. What an exciting and
emotional moment that was, after all this time! We got some people to take
pictures, and a few came to talk to us and congratulated us. It was a hot
day and I even had a swim, (I am not known for being very keen on swimming).
The completion of the coast-to-coast part of our journey, and now the trip
up to NY is a bit of an anticlimax, although it is still fun.
After leaving Annapolis and having a very enjoyable stay with George and
Madeleine, George's friend Judy drove us across the Bay Bridge to Queenstown
and then followed a cue sheet down to Bethany Bay. The Bike Club do this
century ride from time to time, and we took 2 days to do it and managed to
make it about 120 miles due to detours and missing turnoffs. The first day
was in steady drizzle, warm though, and was actually quite pleasant. After
crossing a river on a ferry boat we started the usual end of day routine of
looking out for somewhere to camp, and found a sports field with a lot of
advertising hoardings around it so were able to slip in behind those, and
had a quiet night until the 6 a.m. train came roaring through about 20' away
from us!
The next day's ride down to Bethany Beach was really wonderful, beautiful
sunny warm day, from 61F the day before to about 74F, so in the mid 20's.
Judy offered us accommodation and we had an enjoyable evening talking about
biking, she is an avid cyclist and no wonder because Delaware is so flat,
the only high spots are on bridges!
Yesterday Judy rode with us up to Lewes to catch the ferry across to Cape
May, New Jersey. On the way I indulged in a bit of retail therapy at some
factory outlet stores on the way, bought some decent clothes in preparation
for the high life in NY city. I better buy some sandals too, since my
jandals (flip flops) don't quite cut the mustard with my nice new clothes,
and my bike shoes don't look so great with them either.
Cape May was a beautiful town, an old-style seaside town with a lot of
restored and preserved old buildings, plus a lot of new apartment blocks and
hotels. There were a couple of camp grounds, and it was a bit early to stop
so we continued up the coast through Wildwood, just mooching along looking
at things. That isn't so up-market as Cape May, lots of 6-storey apartment
bldgs and hotels and motels, and not much of a shopping centre, big beach
though.
We headed inland again, and just after turning onto Rt 9 there was a big
vacant section with a For Sale sign on it, long grass, lots of trees. We
went into an area of trees and they formed a canopy with a dry area
underneath, so we didn't even bother to put up the tents, just slept on our
mats. That's the first time I have done that, and apart from getting bitten
by unknown bugs and feeling itchy today, it was a really lovely experience,
waking up during the night and seeing the moon shining through the trees.
The roar of the traffic had subsided by then and all was well in the world.
So now we are loosely following a route up through NJ, we have good
instructions for the hard bits up north, and looking forward to meeting more
people who have contacted me on the email.
Today is a pearler - hot, gentle breeze, probably mid 70's or so, and we are
on Rt 9 which has a nice wide shoulder and is very nice riding through
several small towns. Only 3 km after starting this morning we called into a
shopping centre to get water and there just happened to be an Italian
bakery, so some yummy morning tea was in order and I think I have probably
used 50 calories biking, and eaten about 500 already today!
Next report from the Big Apple! Till next time
Christine and Madi