Bicycling from Boston MA to Washington DC
by Jen Kelly and Roger Cortesi

Lessons Learned | Trip Summary | Trip Photography | Map Index | Useful Links
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9

Date

Starting Point

Ending Point

Today's
Mileage

Total
Mileage

Weather

Alt. Modes of Transit

Comments

Wed, 2 Aug 00

Boston, MA

Westerly, RI

109.5

109.5

Rain in AM, Partly Cloudy PM, Temp: 70's

None

Rt. 102 in RI has lots of long hills

Thr, 3 Aug 00

Westerly, RI

Fisher's Island, NY

35.5

145.0

Cloudy AM, Partly Cloudy PM, Temp 70's

Fisher's Island Ferry

Visited Stonington CT

Fri, 4 Aug 00

Fisher's Island, NY

Fisher's Island, NY

0.0

145.0

Sunny AM & PM, Temp 80's

None

A day of rest and reading

Sat, 5 Aug 00

Fisher's Island, NY

New Rochelle, NY

81.8

226.8

Sunny AM & PM, Temp 80's

Fisher's Island & Orient Pt Ferry
Sailboat from Northport to New Rochelle.

Long Island is flat until Port Jefferson.

Sun, 6 Aug 00

New Rochelle, NY

New Rochelle, NY

3.0

229.8

Cloudy AM, Drizzle PM, Temp 70's

None

got bikes at dock and a day of rest

Mon, 7 Aug 00

New Rochelle, NY

Princeton, NJ

87.7

317.5

Sunny AM, Rain and Thunder PM

Staten Island Ferry; Port Authority Van at Gothell's Bridge

Manhattan is exciting on a bike and the Gothell's Bridge is closed to bike traffic

Tue, 8 Aug 00

Princeton, NJ

Atlantic City, NJ

92.3

409.8

Sunny AM & PM, Temp 90's

None

Middle of NJ is flat and empty.

Wed, 9 Aug 00

Atlantic City, NJ

Greenville, DE

85.8

495.6

Sunny AM & PM, Temp 90's

Cape May-Lewes Ferry

DE is flat with wide shoulders.

Thu, 10 Aug 00

Greenville, DE

Washington DC

93.7

589.3

Cloudy AM, Sunny PM, Temp 90's

Taxi across Bay Bridge

Roger broke his rear axle in three pieces.

Distance Traveled 109.45 miles Time moving: 9h 56m

Well the trip got off to a fine start. Roger left the maps that we had so painstakingly made with the Microsoft Streets & Trips in the car.  This was deemed not a huge problem since we had a good bike maps of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  The stretch in Connecticut is just down Rt. 1 to New London and part in Long Island is pretty easy too. So we decided to push on without the maps we had made.

We crossed into Rhode Island after traveling 44 miles and pedaling for 3h35m, on Spring St.

We stopped for lunch of bananas, granola bars, and oranges at Route 102 and 7. 

We stopped for more PB&J and a much needed break at the West Greenwich police station on 102.

We wondered around Westerly for a while looking for a motel. Asked a guy at the Mobil station just inside CT.  His directions were not very helpful. We went up the road to the fire station and asked. We were directed about a mile up Rt. 1.  There was one last big hill climb to get to the section of 1 that we needed. RI getting its last shot in now because tomorrow it is off to Connecticut.

We arrived at the Franklin Gardens motel on Route 1 (north of Westerly center) at about 7:35pm and then went and ate supper at the Friendly’s across the street. Roger was disappointed to find that Friendly’s does not serve beer. But he made due with a tasty strawberry milkshake.

Distance Traveled 35.5 miles

We slept in until 7:30!!  When we left it was raining steadily.  The temperature was pretty warm (low 70's maybe).

The Route:

We took Rt. 1 south to Stonington CT, then took Rt. 1A into Stonington village. We took a detour down Water St to see Roger’s grandmother's old house.   We continued on to the point at the end of Water St. After this break we continued west on 1a until it met back up with Rt. 1. We followed this into Mystic. We crossed the Mystic River on the drawbridge. We continued south on Rt. 1, and took 215 back to Rt. 1 west into Groton.  We took the pedestrian walkway on the I-95 bridge across the Thames and a one the other side made our way to the New London train station.

The trip across the bridge was rather uneventful.  On the other side we made our way to the New London train station to meet Roger’s parents' train.  They arrived on time.

The 4 of us took the 3:30 ferry to Fisher's Island..   While we were waiting to depart a submarine passed us on its way out to sea.  The ferry ride was rather uneventful.

The bikes did not leave the garage. We spent the day reading and relaxing on Fisher's Island.  We went for a walk around part of the island.  There is one huge ass golf course here. Took some photos, and barked at a dog.

Distance Traveled: 81.8 miles  Time Moving: 7h 36m

The Route:

We started by biking about 8 miles to the ferry which we took back to New London, CT (8:15-9:00am).  This stop was only temporary since an hour later, we were back on another ferry.  This time we were headed to Orient Pt, Long Island, NY (10-11:25am).   We arrived at Orient Point at about 11:30 am at the very start of NY Rt. 25 West.  It was pretty flat with a good shoulder for the first few hours.  We chose to take the Rt. 25 truck route which is also Suffolk County Rt. 48 rather than staying on Rt. 25.  This connected to Rt. 25A at Wading River.  We took this all the way to Main St in Northport which we took down to the water to meet Jen’s parents on their boat.

Rt. 48 gets pretty narrow and loses the shoulder for a big chunk of distance, however.  In addition, this road stays closer to the coast as it travels through Long Island Wine Country.  Unfortunately, we did not get a change to stop for any samples.  We rode for hours through the countryside with a rest-stop every few hours.  At Wading River, Sound Ave (which connects Rt. 48 with 25A) finally merges into 25A so we knew that we were still in the right spot.  Though we were traveling on flat or very gradually upward sloping terrain, right before Port Jeff there was a huge downhill. 

This is only a mean trick, however, because after this point the rather large up and downs began and stayed with us for the remainder of the trip to Northport.  In Port Jeff, we were starting to wonder how much farther Huntington was (still our destination for the day at this time) and we got several estimates including a guy working in a bike store: "Dude! That's really far, like 50 miles or something!"  In turns out that it was closer to 20.  Luckily, our final approach into Northport on Main St was a wonderfully steep and long downhill.  If it had been up, Jen probably would have shot someone, namely, the first family member she encountered.  We loaded the bikes onto the sailboat while resisting the swarms of bugs on the dock and departed at about 8:15pm.  The swarms of bugs are just one indication that there was no wind at this time, so we had to motor from Huntington Bay all the way back to Larchmont Harbor in the dark.  This took quite a while so we did not reach New Rochelle until 1 am.

Distance Traveled: 3.0 miles  Time Moving: approx. 20 m

We drove back to Larchmont Yacht Club to get the bikes off the sailboat and biked back to Jen’s house in New Rochelle.  It was rather hilly, but they are short and for only 3 miles, almost anything is manageable.  It was cloudy and a little drizzly today, so a good day for laundry and sitting around.

Distance Traveled: 87.66 miles   Time moving:   8h 53m

We said goodbye to Jen's parents and started pedaling in New Rochelle at about 6:40 am.

Forest Ave, North Ave, Lincoln Ave., to Mt. Vernon Ave, Yonkers Ave. to Kimball Ave, to McLean Ave, around Van Cortland Park to Broadway (Rt. 9A) where we entered the Bronx.

There are a lot of hills in Yonkers.

Once in the Bronx we started battling the traffic in earnest.  Broadway took us all the way through the Bronx.  We passed the bar that Jen frequented in high school, but the bar had been renamed!  They probably card now. The traffic was a lot lighter then expected for a Monday morning.  The car, trucks, busses, and street sweepers were all polite.   Since it was a street sweeping day there were a lot of parking lanes clear for us to pedal in. For a while in the Bronx we were riding under the elevated trains.  We crossed the Broadway Bridge over the Hudson River.  On the far side of the bridge there was a sign saying no bicycles allowed. Great placement, guys.

On to Manhattan:  We continued down Broadway, with fairly light traffic, until about 180th street when it started getting heavier (still giving us plenty of room though). We turned off Broadway at 120th and got on Riverside Drive.  We went on the drive for about 10 blocks and then got on a bike path in the park. After cycling for a little bit we stopped for breakfast at a playground.

The path in the park ended in the 70's.  We made our way over to 11th Ave., which we took to Chelsea Pier.  We then tried to go across to 5th Ave but ended up on Mercer Street   (cobble stones and very narrow with lots of delivery trucks), which we took to Canal Street.  Traffic was really starting to get heavy in the financial district.  After this our exact route is a little vague as we just followed signs to the Staten Island Ferry.

We had a 15-20 minute wait for the ferry.  We boarded it on the upper pedestrian entrance.  A policeman directed us to the vehicle deck downstairs.  In the future use the vehicle entrance when boarding with a bicycle.  The ferry was free and the ride lasted about 25 minutes.

Once on Staten Island we made a right on to Richmond Terrace and just followed signs for the Goethals Bridge. When we arrive at the NY/NJ Port Authority building, Roger went upstairs to ask about how bicycles could get across. "They can't cross this bridge".  The only bridge off Staten Island that bicycles can ride over is the Bayonne Bridge.  Hmm that would take us in the opposite direction from Princeton, NJ.  None of the city buses run across the bridge.  We tried calling three taxi companies.  The first said no and hung up on us, and the other two numbers did not work.  A taxi pulled up to drive this other guy across the bridge.   Roger asked the driver if knew of a taxi company that would take us across.  He thought Sam's Taxi in Staten Island would do it.  At this point a really nice man named Manny Ortega  (we may be messing up the name), who works for the port authority, called up one of his coworkers.  The coworker picked us up in a bright yellow van and dropped us off on Rt. 1 &9 near Linden, NJ.

Multiple people had advised us that Rt. 1&9 in NJ is horrible for biking.  It is clear why.  There are about 3 lanes in each direction, no shoulder, and the traffic is extremely heavy. The speed limit is 55 mph, but the traffic of mostly 18-wheelers was at a standstill.   We turned off this road at the first available side road, Clinton Street.  From here we turned on another side road (left) that went past school #6 and ended up on Rt. 617.  We took Rt. 617 to Rt. 514, which merged into Rt. 27 outside New Brunswick. There were a lot of trucks on Rt. 514 but there was an adequate shoulder for most of it. Several miles outside of New Brunswick, Rt. 514 became a much larger 4-lane highway with a lot of debris on the shoulder.  We were looking for Rt. 514 leaving New Brunswick.

According to the map, Rt. 514 should have branched off Rt. 27, but first we looked up Rt. 27 for a ways and didn't find it then we went over to Rt. 527 and didn't find it there either. This part of the map was not clear - the critical intersection was blocked by the "ck' in New Brunswick.  Rt. 527 was good, however, in the beginning and you could see the river on the right.  Rt. 527 soon got a lot busier so we got on a crappy bike path that ran next to it to get us out of traffic.

We took Rt. 527 to just before I-287.  We stopped at the Kwikimart at Cedar Grove Lane to get a more detailed map of Mercer County and directions to the Delaware and Raritan Canal Path. We took Cedar Grove Lane to Weston St, and we wound around a lot, following little bikes painted on the road.  We ended up in Colonial Park on the canal.  Our intention was to follow the canal path all the way into Princeton.   We started off on a paved path in the park that ran near the canal and then it ended at Elizabeth Road.  This took us back to Rt. 514. We went west on Rt. 514 and picked up the canal again in East Millstone.  Here, we started on the dirt towpath along the canal.  It had been raining since we got on Rt. 514 for the second time.  We followed the towpath to Black Mills and crossed the canal to try riding on Canal Road.

This was much less dirty then the path and would have been very nice, but there was no shoulder and a the little traffic that there was would go screaming past us at about mach 2.  We saw a triple rainbow behind us when the rain stopped.   We got back on the path the Griggstown lock since it was more direct and there were no cars.  By this point the sun had come out, and we were making good time, though getting pretty dirty in the process because of all the mud puddles.  Roger got a flat where the towpath crosses Rt. 27 so we fixed it there.   That provided a much-needed break.  We continued the 5.5 miles to Alexander Street in Princeton.   We went to my friend’s old house but he had moved and neglected to tell me his new address!  Fortunately, a friend of his had moved in and she gave us direction to Tommy's new apartment on the Princeton campus.

Once there, we rinsed the bikes off, did laundry, had really good Chinese food, and went to bed.

Distance Traveled: 94.28 miles    Time moving: 7h 35m

So we finally left Princeton at about 6:40am.  The weather was clear, but a bit warm and humid.  We took Alexander Road, to North Post Road, turned left onto something that begins with a c, right onto Glaston Rd then right onto Old Trenton Rd.  We took Rt. 526 to S. Main Street and then turned left onto Rt. 539. We saw a bit of the morning traffic, but nothing very heavy in our direction.

We took Rt. 539 and at the junction with Rt. 528 we stopped at a bike shop to get  a replacement inner tube and some chain oil.  The drive trains on both bikes were feeling and sounding a bit tortured from the previous day’s adventure in the mud. The people at the shop were very helpful and suggested a good route to Atlantic City.

It was about 10 miles from the bike shop to Rt. 70.  About 2 miles past Rt. 70 we crossed some old train tracks and then made the next right on Pasadena Rd (the small green street sign called in something else). Rt. 539 had  a good shoulder and moderate traffic with a lot of trucks.   Pasadena Rd went from some shoulder to none, but there was almost no traffic.  In the 8.5 miles to Rt. 72 we were passed by about a dozen cars. The Pine forests are on both sides of the road are very nice.

There had not been any major hills yet today.  The ground rolls up and down very slightly and we have been making excellent time.We turned left onto Rt. 72 and then right onto Rt. 532.  We took this to Rt. 563 in Chatsworth.  We stopped for lunch here having traveled 52 miles in the morning.

In Chatsworth we took Rt. 563 South into Egg Harbor. Rt. 563 was a pleasant cycle.  Traffic was light. Then we took Rt. 30 all the way into Atlantic City.  Traffic on Rt. 30 was heavy, but there was a wide shoulder for most of the way.

We arrived in Atlantic City at 5:30 PM.  Once there we took Martin Luther King Blvd to the Boardwalk.   We walked up the Boardwalk with the bikes a little bit until we found a Comfort Inn on Kentucky Ave.  We got a room and then went out on the Boardwalk to find something to eat and to look at the strange people.

Total distance traveled today: 85.8 miles   Total time moving:  7h 37m

Atlantic City to Cape May Distance: 52 miles   Time: 4h 45m

Total distance traveled to date: 498.44 miles

The weather was overcast in the morning and then sunny by midday.  It warmed up after 10 am so the temperature was in the 80's.

After our continental breakfast of Rice Crispies, Cheerios, Orange Juice and bananas we started out.

We traveled down the Atlantic City boardwalk for the first 4.5 miles, then we took Atlantic Ave and eventually cut over to Ventor Ave to the traffic circle. We went over our first bridge of the day.  After this bridge we had to take a more indirect route to Ocean City.  We took Rt.152 inland since the more direct bridge is closed to bicycles. We took Rt. 152 to Rt. 585, which then became Rt. 52.  We took this across another bridge back towards Ocean City and the boardwalk there.   This was superior to the Atlantic City Boardwalk because it had designated bike, surrey, and pedestrian lanes for each direction. This lasted about 1.2 miles and then the boardwalk narrowed so we took Central Ave south. Later on we tried getting back on the boardwalk because it pretty very empty, but it ended 1 block later.

Back on Central Ave we took Ocean Drive (Rt. 619) until North Wildwood where it became Rt. 621.   Follow the gull signs.  We crossed a whole bunch of cool draw bridges over the intracoastal waterway.  It was $0.50 for cars and free for bikes!!!! The bridges had a metal grating for the draw part.

We stopped to eat our regular fare of peanut butter, bananas, bagels and granola bars outside the McDonalds in North Wildwood (where 619 became 621).

At Rt. 109, Roger made a wrong turn south (following signs to cape may), and we had to ask for directions to the ferry.  There is no sign for the ferry at the junction of Routes 109 and 621, but there were lots of signs to lead the beach traffic from the beach back to the ferry.

We turned around and made our way to the ferry.  We caught the 1:40 PM boat to Lewes.

The ferry ride was about 1h 20m and the cost for two cyclist was $14.

After leaving the ferry port at Lewes, DE we stopped in the main terminal building and picked up our free map of DE, and a booklet with all the motels and hotels in Delaware listed.  This was very useful, as it was one of the factors in determining how far we could go that afternoon.

We took Rt. 9 to Rt. 5.  For about 1/2 mile Rt. 9 and 1 are the same with 3 lanes of moderate to heavy traffic in each direction.

We took Rt. 5 North into the town of Milford where we picked up Rt. 16 West.  We stayed on Rt. 16 until the junction with Rt. 13 N (about 14 miles).  We turned north for about 1 MI on Rt. 13 to the Greenwood Inn, passing Cafe Milano, the Italian restaurant we would return to for dinner an hour later. 

We continued up Rt. 18 west until well got to Rt. 8.  Here we stopped in the "Shore Stop" convenience store & gas station to call the taxi that would take us across the Bay bridge.  Since we had failed to give the taxi company any advanced warning, we had to put the bikes in the back of a station wagon.  With a little warning (the day before) they could have picked us up in a pickup truck, which would have been easier.

After getting driven across the bridge we were dropped off along the Rt. 50 service road in the parking lot of a "Beer Wine Spirits" store.  We kept pedaling until Roger noticed a new wobble in the rear wheel of his bike and a dramatic increase in the effort needed to keep it moving.

We stopped again and I ascertained that the problem was a broken rear axle.  After some tinkering and adjusting of the rear cones and quick release lever, I was able to get the bike to roll reasonably well.  This allowed us to make it into Annapolis.

After making our way to Main St, we asked a UPS man if there were any bike stores in the area.  He sent us to a street just off Rt. 450 W (West St.), which was great since it was close by and it was in the right direction.  The guys there seemed to be amazed that Roger's rear axle was in such bad shape.  We spent about an hour there getting it fixed and finally continued on.  We stayed on Rt. 450W through Bowie (and up and down lots of hills) until a “T” intersection.  Then we got on Rt. 564, which crossed the Beltway in New Carrollton, MD.

Then we took Riverdale Rd., which becomes Rt. 410 (still pretty big hills) and made a left onto Queen Chapel's Rd., which became Michigan Ave. when we entered DC.  We took Michigan Ave around the Washington Hospital Center (at this point we are riding in the sidewalk which indicates that it is the Bike Route since traffic was getting heavy and there was NO shoulder at all on the street).  We turned onto Columbia which took us to Kalorama and eventually winded our way to Massachusetts Ave and our final destination!  All this and it was only 6:55 PM rather than the much later expected arrival time when we initially estimated that it was over 100 miles from Greenwood, DE to Washington, DC.