Perkiomen and Schuylkill

Yesterday Phil Ruth and I did a nice little rails to trails ride near Phoenixville in Montgomery County.  I didn't have my Turnpike easypass, so this map shows how I got there, and got home.  The bicycle ride shows up as the teal colored section.

Here is a closer view of the route, although Google is not too accurate - we took the same trail out and back.

Here is a map of the trails in general.  You can take them the whole way to Boathouse row in Philadelphia.  I circled our route in a thin blue line.

Our parking lot.

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Phil knows this area well.  He was discussing the possibility of off-roading it a bit.  We tried it for a very short distance, but it was a surface of fist-sized gravel.  Not our cup of tea.

This was the Lock.  Don't drink the water.

I didn't photo it well, but the top beams or the lock gates were levers that a man or beast could move to open or close the doors.

The Lock Tender's house.

We saw tons of big turtles in the canal.

It was hot.

I hunted for purple, pink and white Phlox.  It's a good spring for Phlox.

We took it easy on our ride.  Just like the bollards.

The entire route didn't have any fast bollards.

The main reason we do these rides is to get lunch.  Unfortunately, at our turn-around in Schwenksville, all the restaurants were inexplicably closed.

Eventually we found a hole in the wall pizza and cheese steak place.  These are my favorite type of place for our rides, and Phil seems to tolerate them.

We read a few paragraphs from our Africa journals, about traveling in Lamu.

We had some paved trails, which were a little irritating because real bicyclers were out, always yelling "On your left" as they zoom dangerously by.  But much of the trail was gravel, and good for easy riding and conversation.  This was one of my favorite parts, near Lock 90.  It was called "Stabilized Turf," and was atop the ridge between the canal and the river.

Here is a little video from near the end on the stabilized turf trail.  The canal was very popular with people in kayaks and canoes.

Let me list the words I'll never learn to spell:

Perkiomen 

Schuylkill

Schwenksville

I still can't pronounce Perkiomen, for some reason.