Day 2, NY, NJ and PA

I'm posting this while eating a sausage and egg bagel sandwich at Dunkin Donuts, yum! Yesterday was a GREAT day. We started out at about 7 am (a little later than we intended!) with a LOVELY downhill, the other side of Bear Mountain that we climbed up the day before! It took us past a beautiful series of lakes.. fantastic! 

We aren't sure when we crossed the state line to New Jersey (we didn't even know we were riding through!) but to our surprise we saw a couple signs, and HAD to take a picture to make sure we have some from every state we go through!

We carried on and stopped for first lunch of a chicken sandwich at McDonalds (we weren't happy about that),

And second lunch at a deli in...somewhere in New Jersey! It was really good, and while we were waiting for our turkey sandwich an pasta salad Alec went next door and bought some sushi also! And we feasted, while watching the rain pickup..

After a good break and some good food we were ready to GO despite the rain! 

We've been using google maps with the walking setting (to avoid major highways) and it brought us to this airport with all these cool glider planes, which was great,

And then the maps brought us to this muddy walking path...

It was a nice path, but we diverted from it to the highway when we could so we could wrap up the day faster! We were antsy to get to our Warm Showers host (warm showers is a great host resource for touring cyclists!) Dan. We finally pulled up to his house, after crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania! 

and he was FANTASTIC. He set us up in his barn/hangar in his backyard that had some cool old cars and tractors (one was from as early as 1949!!).

He invited us to have dinner with him (SO NICE!!) and two of his friends, Noel and Sandy. We helped cook and chop, and had burritos with chicken and veggies, and this great black bean, corn, pepper, tomorrow, onion and olive oil salad. It was a wonderful meal, and it was great visiting with the three of them! I'm sad we don't have a picture with the three of them, but we had a fantastic time -- and some yummy homeade bread pudding and ice cream for dessert!! Then after a warm shower (Thank you Dan!) we headed to bed in the hangar where we could spread out and not even have to pitch the tent!

Dan rode 10 miles with us in the rain this morning, which was fantastic!! Thanks again, Dan, we really appreciate the hospitality and advice you gave us!!

Daily stats:

Miles: 72.91

Average speed: 10.72

Elevation gain: 3,810 ft

Ditches: 1

Side of bridge: 1

Trees on muddy path: 1

Allie: 0

Alec ran into a ditch too, it's not just me!!!

He claims it was on purpose, but I don't buy it. On the other hand, all of my "troubles" are all clearly carefully planned out and on purpose.. 

Daily haiku:

Bike in rain,

Had fun in the mud,

Bread pudding.