John forgot to turn off the Ipod: Last days of bike trip.

This is the final 3 days of our trip.
Sorry for delays. Im sure you were holding your breath.

Out of Windsor NY was a 20 mile long reservoir. Apparently it is one of a few places where New York City gets its drinking water. I have never seen DEP police until riding through here. They were like real police but it seemed they just drove around the water looking for people dumping or sabotaging it. Neat.

The rest of the day was spent just trying to get into the Catskills. We stopped in Dehi, which has a SUNY, which meant a cool coffee shop. We found the "catskill scenic trail." It was pretty rough, be we are like Cat 1 rail trail riders, so we bossed it.

We stopped in Stamford. Not too much going on there. We camped behind a school. I managed to get my bivy sack and my bike under a bridge for handicapped people in anticipation of rain. I hate packing a wet tent.

Scenic upstate NY. This farm had a "leave money take maple syrup" stand. Awesome.

"catskill scenic 'trail'"

We finally see some mountains.

Railtrail countdown.

Camping under a ramp. Nature. Wicked helmet tan.

Woke up to pouring rain. Got ripped off for breakfast. Started riding toward the Catskills. We rode for hours straight, stopping in hunter. At times there was standing water on the road because it was raining so freaking hard. It sucked. We stopped at least 2 hours in the town of hunter and sat in a cafe. This is where the Tour of the Catskills road race finished a few weeks earlier. We were a week too early for the world cup, that would have been sick. We decided to pay for a cabin, cause it was not supposed to stop raining. I am so glad that we did, cause it rained over 2 inches in 24 hours, straight through the night and into the next day.

The cabin was awesome. We had a crappy TV with a UHF dial and a kitchen. It had electric heat, so we put all of our clothing on the heaters and turned it up to 80. It was right around 60 all day, so being wet sucked. When we woke up, it was still POURING rain. We dilly dallied and told ourselves that if we made it to Port Jervis NJ, there was a chance of taking commuter trains back to Philly. (Euro or soft, you choose)... So we rode straight for 60+ miles to Port Jervis. We missed the 1pm train and sat in the little train booth for awhile trying to get warm.
LOW POINT OF TRIP: Pulling out what I thought was my rain pants, but what turned out to be a freaking backpack cover. Good job packing steevo.
We got lunch and went to the family dollar. We bought gloves and I looked for a wool cap. It was cold. I hate being cold and wet.

Then the rain stopped! 40+ hours of rain over!

It was awesome. We headed into the Delaware water gap to cycle the Old Mine Road. This is probably one of those things that is on a bunch of "must ride" lists. It is a 40 mile road in the water gap that cars can only enter, like a peninsula. This causes VERY little traffic. Like we saw 5 cars in 40 miles. It was awesome. The rain had let up and we had a great ride to an awesome camp site.

Our final day we rode from the Delaware Water Gap to Philly. 110 miles or so. There is a cool foot bridge that we were able to take that cars cannot (hence us being able to get out and cars not being able to)... it is part of the Appalachian Trail.

Google maps led us astray and we ended up going a bit out of the way. We could have taken 611, but instead ended up on 191 (Mountain Road) for a surprise 5 mile climb.

Here is a map of this whole area. SICK!

We headed south along the river. Jersey was on our left. We were going to take the D&L towpath the whole way, but IT CRACKED US. This was the like the freaking Race Across America of railtrails. It was grueling. We only made it 4 freaking miles before getting back on the road. RAILTRAILFAIL!