Originally Posted by
indyfabz
I still lament the loss of the campground at Bull's Island. Was my favorite place to ride from home for a long weekend tour. 60 or so miles from my house. Great for training. The first weekend I stayed there was an Easter weekend. On Good Friday there were a few sites occupied. Saturday night we had the entire place to ourselves. Kind of spooky. Once the Black Bass Hotel re-opened after flood damage you could walk across the pedestrian bridge for a drink at the bar, which was originally in Maxim's of Paris. Alas, repeated flooding damaged the root systems of the large trees. For safety reasons, the state decided to close the campground and fell the trees. When money allows, the plan is to create a nature walk through the former campground.
Sounds like it was a great place, too bad the campground is gone. I've not really looked around much - first ride through I determined the bathrooms were closed, so this weekend just took a brief saddle break where the trail crosses. The fact that I can make good time on the path above and below there has been key - contrastingly the double tracks and drop off to the river on the PA side between Centre Bridge and Lumberville had me a little more stressed so I'm now choosing the NJ side for the middle portion crossing back to PA at Frenchtown-Ulherstown.
Notice a lot of people riding the parallel road, too.
There is little to no signage at that turn. I missed it once a long time ago.
Northbound on Sunday I was looking for the turn near the rt 202 bridge above Stockton where the canal path switches to the rail trail, what I hadn't expected in taking it with a large radius was to "drop" a railroad track as the east side of it was embedded in the trail but the west side of the west rail was bare. Thought I was coming off for a minute but regained control. Not that I didn't "spill" at the crest leaving a spillway early on, and several other times throughout the ride up to Easton and Monday's right back, fortunately only to my feet. The landing and runout from the railroad track was rocky enough I might have gone down unpleasantly.
The other one to keep an eye on are the drainage gulleys hiding in shadow under the camelback bridges on the PA side.
The stretch behind the houses in L'Ville is nice. You can see right into peoples' lives.
There are a lot of stretches like this, both where you see houses across the canal and those much more intimate with the trail (on the PA side even having it as their driveway). And some really stately places along the D&L. I can't make up my mind if living there would be nice or not, on the one hand picturesque and convenient, on the other loss of privacy, a PA-side canal that's often little more than a dried up mud ditch, and a wonder if it's mosquito habitat. Bugs in the eyes made it hard to avoid touching my face at times.