A Bonus Bridge!

Most of my bike rides from West Chester head due west straight into horse country. Recently I have been heading south into Delaware for a chance in scenery. I usually take Creek Road which runs along the Brandywine River. I usually stop at first intersection that I come to in Delaware to figure out which way I’d going to go. One of the roads at this intersection is Smith Bridge Road.

I have never chosen to head down Smith’s Bridge Road, mainly because it heads right back into Pennsylvania and into some fairly urban roadways that are not fun for cycling. A few weeks ago at Kevin’s graduation party I was speaking to our friend Matt about the area. He pointed out to me that Smith Bridge Road has a nice covered bridge on it that is called, of all things, Smith’s Bridge.

With this new information in hand, I headed out to see it this past Thursday. Getting to the bridge was pretty easy. As the crow flies it is only about 10 miles away. Taking Creek Road it was a mostly flat (522 feet of climbing) and very pleasant 16.3 mile ride. This route takes me past the N.C, Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth house and the Brandywine River Museum that houses much of their work. The museum has a nice collection of early American artist. I particularly like the 4 or 5 Horace Pipin paintings. 

The bridge is a new one of sorts. As the plaque at the bridge states, the original bridge was built in 1839, modified in 1956, destroyed by fire in 1961, rebuilt with out a cover in 1962, and reconstructed with Burr Trusses with cover in 2002.

My return trip I decided to travel through the area that I have always avoided. With the exception of about half a mile along Route 1 I was pleasantly surprised at what a nice it was. I stopped at the Brandywine Battlefield Park, which I have never seen before. I also came across the ruins of an octagonal one room school at a place called Archies Corner in southern Delaware County PA. My route covered 30 miles and past some interesting sights! 

See photos from my ride here.

Ride lots, stop often!

Russell

Bicycle Botany: The Kudzu of the North!

Back in Washington State I would occasionally be riding along on my bike when I would smell a particular fragrant plant then have the overwhelming urge to head to a mirco-brewery. The plant that would cause such an urge was Humulus lupulus, or Common Hops. I knew the odor well as we had a Centennial Hops growing in our back yard in Sequim.

Back in the spring I began to see a plant growing on the side of the road that looked very much like hops, but the fragrant smell was absent. I stopped and crushed the leaves to see if it had the distinctive odor and it did, but very faintly, clearly not the hops that I was familiar with back in Sequim. I took a chunk of it home and as it turns out, it was a species of hops, Humulus japonicus, or Japanese Hops.

As the summer has worn on here I have seen more, and more, and more of this stuff creeping along the roadways of southeastern PA. In fact, once I began to hone in on it, I’d notice it taking over whole fields! Instead of invoking pleasant thoughts of heading to a brewery, I began to have nightmare that if I stopped to long on the side of the road I would be swallowed whole by a killer plant. It reminds me of that other invasive vine from Asia – kudzu.

One of the things about the Northeast that I have always liked is that the winters here seem to be to cold for kudzu to thrive like it does down south, but where kudzu leaves off, Japanese hops seems to take over. One thing that is a little reassuring is that Japanese hops dies back completely in the winter, so its ability to cover entire forest is somewhat limited.

According to the USDA there is not much that can be done to control Japanese hops. The best method that I can find is mechanical control which, in the long run, does little to stop its spread.

As a side note, it is one of five members of the Hemp family found in Pennsylvania. According to the Plants of Pennsylvania common hopes and its more infamous cousin marijuana are also found growing wild in the state but in a very limited number of places. The two other members of the family are native. Hackberry (Celtis accidentalis) is found commonly throughout the state and dwarf hackberry (Celtis tenuifolia) is limited to the southeast and southcentral regions.

See more photos of the best here.

Ride lots, stop often,

Russell

A Week At The Beach

Last week we finally got our act together and went on a long over due family vacation! We dusted off all the camping gear and headed to the Delaware Seashore State Park. Our activities were completely predictable. Mary and the kids swam at the beach. Russell rode on his bike. The gnats bit hard. We went to the boardwalk at Rehobeth Beach. Ate ice cream. Swam on the beach some more. See photos here. 

Kevin's Graduation Party!

Hey folks, a few weekends ago we had Kevin's big celebration for finishing nursing school. Congratulations Kevin and good luck with your new career! See photos of the weekend here. 

The Boys Go Camping

Ever since school got out, William has been asking to go camping. The only problem with this request was one of shelter. We have two tents. A giant 6 person tent that requires two adults to pitch, and a small one person tent that I use for bicycle trips. Oh, we also have two old tents (over 15 years old) that leak lots of water in the event of rain. Since Mary wouldn't be joining us on the camping trip, the 6 person tent was out. What to do?

Then I remembered that we still had about $80 on our REI rebate! So, one day William and I went to the local REI and found a two person tent for about $100, which with our rebate, only cost $20. Not a bad deal! Now we had enought water tight shelter for all the Rogers boys to go on a camping trip! 

We chose to go to Hibernia County Park, which was only about 30 minutes away and had a primitive camp ground. Perfect. We also chose to go during the week in hopes of less people to deal with. We packed up are gear and headed out. We got the campsite and set up camp. It was a very nice camp site which we had all to ourselves! Even more perfect!

We then had lunch of standard camping fair (hog dogs) and then I headed over the to park office to pay for our site. At that point I learned why we had the campsite all to ourselves as it was only open on weekends. Total bummer! 

We headed back to the camp ground and took down our tents and packed the car. A quick search on my iPhone showed that there was a commercial campsite just a few miles away. It was considerably more expensive, but it had pool which which was a big bonus for the boys. We swam at the pool, had dinner of standard camping fair (more hot dogs) and s'mores by the campfire. 

The next morning I was glad that I went and bought the new tent as it rained cats and dogs! We had hoped to spend much of the day by the pool. Instead, we packed up the car, and drove over to Lancaster and found a dinner and got hot chocolates and sticky buns. 

Check out photos of our adventure here.

Fourteen years ago today...

...we welcomed our daughter Emily into the world. Happy Birthday Emily! See fourteen years of Emily here. 

Covered Bridges Number 4 and 5

I have finally gotten back to the task of riding my bike to all of Chester County’s covered bridges. In the post about my last visit, Speakman Bridge Number 1, I said that Speakman Bridge Number 2 was close by but that I couldn’t visit it. In fact there are two bridges close by, the other is called Hayes Clark, and the reason that I couldn’t visit these to bridges before now has to do with my shoes.

Both of these bridges, which are only 500 feet apart, are close to the end of my favorite ride in the Chester County countryside but I had never seen them until yesterday. At the end of Apple Grove Road there is a gravel road that goes off to the left to the Laurels Preserve. The preserve, along with the bridges, are owned by the Brandywine Conservancy. Thus, the roads to the bridges are close to traffic. So, you can’t ride your bike or drive your car to these bridges, you can only walk. The entrance to the preserve is 17.5 miles away and I have always ridden my road bike to this location, which has “Look” type pedals. You know, the kind that you have to wear the funny shoes that clip in. These shoes are great for bikes, but poor for walking.

So, in order to see these bridges, I needed to either ride my commuter bike with the mountain bike shoes that are good for walking or bring a pair of shoes with me on my road bike. Since my commuter bike, aka Bubba, is much heavier than my road bike, aka Zippy, I chose to strap a pair of sandals to the handlebars and hope for the best.

The walk to the bridges is down an old dirt road that goes along side Doe Run Creek and is just beautiful. As I walked along I thought it would be nice to load down Bubba with a picnic lunch and take a slow ride out to spend the day there with Mary and other friends. The Hayes Clark Bridge is the first bridge that you reach, which is only about a 0.7 mile walk from the entrance. It was built in 1871. The Speakman 2 bridge, which also goes by the name Mary Ann Pyle, was built in 1881. Both of these bridges were renovated in the 70’s or 80’s. What I noticed is that either of them had been modernized, with steal beams or such, in the way that the other bridges that I have visited have been. So, my guess is that these bridges appear much the same way that they would when they were built. This may also be a problem in that they are falling apart. So much so that the Brandywine Conservancy has limited their usage to only pedestrians (i.e, no horses allowed!). The Conservancy is working on permits to repair them bridges as soon as they can.

My ride out the Laurels Preserve was fairly standard at 36.18 miles. The only complication (besides the heat and humidity) was that some of the roads were getting a fresh chip seal coat on them. I tried to avoid those areas as much as I could because I always seem to get a flat tire when I go over fresh chip seal.

Now it is off to the other 10 bridges. The rest will all be over 60 miles round trip and will take some preplanning on my part. Some of them a clustered pretty close together, so I should be able to do more than one bridge per ride.

See photos of the bridges here, and the route of my ride here.

Ride lots, stop often,

Russell