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.
A proper escape from New York with roads worth waking up for. Out of Long Branch and back again: 674 km, roughly 10 h 50 in the saddle. On the way it passes Scenic stretch near Bedminster, near Milford and Branford Center. near Vista Center is the high point. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Long Branch has been a seaside resort for longer than most American towns have existed. On the Jersey Shore in Monmouth County, it was where wealthy New Yorkers and Philadelphians came to escape the summer heat in the nineteenth century, and for a while it was the summer capital of the United States. Several presidents vacationed here, including Ulysses S. Grant, who kept a cottage, and James Garfield, who was brought to the Elberon section after he was shot in 1881 and died there that September. The little Church of the Presidents still stands in town.
Read the complete Long Branch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Next is High point near Vista Center.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Scenic stretch near Bedminster.
about 151 km into the recorded legs you reach Scenic stretch near Bedminster. Next is Photo stop near Milford.
Photo stop near Milford, about halfway. Next is New York / Hudson Valley rides return.
The base of the Statue of Liberty is made of pink granite from Stony Creek, a village in Branford, and the quarries on the shore still cut stone today. Off the coast, the Thimble Islands, a scattering of more than a hundred small granite islands, some with a single house perched on the rock, dot the water of Long Island Sound. Boat tours from Stony Creek wind among them in summer, telling tales of pirates, millionaires and General Tom Thumb, the famous circus showman, who is said to have courted a woman on one of the islands.
Read the complete Branford Center write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
New York / Hudson Valley rides return sits at 397 km, about halfway. Next is Taconic Parkway Backroads food stop.
Captain Kidd, the pirate, is said to have buried treasure on Charles Island, off the coast of Milford, in 1699, shortly before his arrest and execution. Nobody has found it, but the legend lives on. The island is connected to the mainland at low tide by a sandbar, and you can walk across from Silver Sands State Park. Be careful: the tide comes in fast, and people get stranded every year.
Read the complete Milford write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Taconic Parkway Backroads food stop is where this day stops to eat. Next is Taconic Parkway Backroads checkpoint 8.
The Kill van Kull is a narrow tidal strait between Bayonne in New Jersey and the North Shore of Staten Island, and it is one of the busiest waterways in the country. Enormous container ships, tankers and tugs squeeze through it on their way to and from the port at Newark and Elizabeth, passing so close to the shore that you feel you could touch them. Above it, the great steel arch of the Bayonne Bridge links the two sides.
Read the complete Near Bayonne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Taconic Parkway Backroads checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Taconic Parkway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Long Branch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Taconic Parkway. That is the ride.
This High point near Vista Center → Scenic stretch near Bedminster 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.
Scenic stretch near Bedminster → Photo stop near Milford 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.
This Photo stop near Milford → Branford Center 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.