NYC to Phili

The day started gloriously!  A gorgeous crisp fall morning. We headed over to the 35th street ferry to get on the Seaside Ferry to Atlantic Highlands.  We got on the ferry, one of the hands was asking us about our trip and he said, "Yay, I have this friend that rides his bike 130 miles from here to blah blah to see his mom then he takes the ferry back over to NJ and one day he missed the last ferry by 2 minutes and had to spend the night on a bench."  Anyway, we got off the boat and grabbed a bagel, Amy went to the bike shop to get some air in her tires and she was charged $1 for each tire!  Can you imagine? We shared with him where we were headed. He said"Philadelphia?! How are you going to do that?"  We explained we had a route we were following from a group that had done it before. He proceeded to tell us what highway we should get on and what route he thought we should follow. He was talking to us like we didn't even take the time out to figure this out. We left the bike store and we headed out on this days journey. The first road we hit was a short 8% grade hill through a golf course. We then made a couple of turns where we came to another hill top. This hill top dumped us right on a gravely down hill farm road. Amy looked at me, with eyebrows raised and said, "No!"  I suggested she look at the map on her phone to see if it makes sense with the route. By now, we question a lot of the routes on our map because there have been a good amount of snafus. She checked then looked me and gave me an affirmative nod with her head. So we got on and headed down the road. We are no strangers to gravely roads with d2r2 and battenkill under our belts. It's a bit tricky with packs on the bike, but we did it!  We continued for a couple of miles like that on thick, sandy, gravely road....taking a break now for dinner, more later. ( we did make it to Phili)