CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Built for flow, views and useful stops rather than navigation busywork. A 492 km loop that starts and ends near Parsippany, about 7 h 39 of riding. It goes by way of near Shrewsbury, Sea Girt and Scenic stretch in Old Bethpage. The climb of the day is near Mendham.
Parsippany-Troy Hills is suburban New Jersey at its most typical: office parks, shopping centres and the enormous junction of Interstate 80 and Interstate 287, one of the busiest crossroads in the state. Nobody comes here for the scenery, but it is a useful launch point, because the good roads of northern New Jersey begin just beyond the town limits.
Read the complete Fuel stop in Parsippany write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Next is High point near Mendham.
The winter of 1779 to 1780 was one of the harshest on record, and the Continental Army spent it in huts at Jockey Hollow, a few miles east of Mendham, short of food, clothing and pay. Soldiers froze, starved and deserted, and some mutinied, yet the army survived. The site is now part of Morristown National Historical Park, with reconstructed huts, an old farmhouse and quiet woodland trails, and it is a moving place to stop.
Read the complete Food stop in Mendham write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Food stop near Shrewsbury.
Inland from Shrewsbury and the Jersey Shore, western Monmouth County is a surprise to anyone who thinks New Jersey is all highways and suburbs. This is farm country, with horse paddocks, sod farms, orchards and fields of corn and soybeans, crossed by quiet roads and dotted with small villages. Allentown, a few miles west, is a delightful old mill town with a millpond, a main street of eighteenth-century houses and antique shops.
Read the complete Food stop near Shrewsbury write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Next is New York / Hudson Valley rides return.
A short red-brick lighthouse with a square tower stands on the corner of Ocean Avenue in Sea Girt, looking more like a Victorian house that grew a lantern than a proper beacon. It was built in the 1890s to fill a dark gap in the chain of lights along the Jersey Shore, and today volunteers keep it open for occasional tours. Around it, Sea Girt is a small, quiet, well-kept borough of shingled houses, wide lawns and shady streets, with a non-commercial boardwalk running along a clean, broad beach.
Read the complete Sea Girt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
New York / Hudson Valley rides return, about halfway. Next is Scenic stretch in Old Bethpage.
Step into Old Bethpage Village Restoration and Long Island's suburbs vanish: a nineteenth-century farming village of houses, barns, a church, a tavern and a blacksmith's shop, many of them moved here from elsewhere on the island to save them from demolition. Costumed staff work the fields and crafts, and the contrast with the busy roads outside is striking.
Read the complete Scenic stretch in Old Bethpage write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Scenic stretch in Old Bethpage sits at 298 km, about halfway. Next is Photo stop near Fort Salonga.
Fort Salonga takes its name from a British stronghold of the Revolutionary War. Fort Slongo stood on a bluff above Long Island Sound, and in 1781 American troops crossed the water from Connecticut and raided it. Nothing much remains, but the name lives on in this leafy corner of the North Shore, between Kings Park and Northport, where wooded hills drop to rocky beaches and the Sound glitters to the north.
Read the complete Photo stop near Fort Salonga write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Photo stop near Fort Salonga comes up about 363 km into the recorded legs. Next is North Fork Lighthouse Easy Ride checkpoint 8.
Kearny is a Scottish town that happens to be in New Jersey. In the late nineteenth century, thread mills and linoleum factories run by Scottish companies drew workers from Scotland and Northern Ireland to this hilly strip of land between the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, and they brought with them their churches, pipe bands and, above all, football. For decades Kearny was known as Soccer Town USA, producing an unusual number of players for the US national team, and the sport still matters here more than in most American towns.
Read the complete Kearny write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
North Fork Lighthouse Easy Ride checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to North.
Parsippany is a large, sprawling township in Morris County, with more than fifty thousand people, a lot of offices and a patchwork of highways, and it belongs to the belt of suburbs that runs west of Newark into the New Jersey hills. Its name may come from a Native word of uncertain meaning. To the north and west, the landscape starts to change, with ridges, lakes and woods of the Highlands rising, and the point lies right on the transition.
Read the complete North write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to North. That is the ride.
This High point near Mendham → Food stop near Shrewsbury stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Food stop near Shrewsbury → Sea Girt is the logistics leg. Watch junctions, villages and speed changes, then let the roadbook do its job: move you out of the clutter without spending your best attention too early.
Scenic stretch in Old Bethpage → Photo stop near Fort Salonga is the technical section. Hairpins, gradients and mixed traffic can stack up quickly; use low drama inputs, stay wide of centre lines and expect buses or riders appearing exactly where optimism says they will not.
Photo stop near Fort Salonga → Kearny can flow quickly, but only if you keep village limits and junction sightlines sacred. Fast connectors are where rides get untidy when fatigue creeps in.