I've gone bicycle camping at five separate locations across four trips over the past couple of years, all directly from NYC: •Bulls Island State Park in Delaware, NJ (on the Delaware River, absolutely loved it) •Washington Crossing State Park in Titusville, NJ (also on Delaware but sites are inland a bit) •Round Lake Reservoir in Clinton, NJ (all campsites are at the water's edge, great place) •Croton Point Park in Westchester County, NY (on Hudson River, phenomenally beautiful, sunsets are spectacular) •Heckscher State Park in East Islip, NY (Long Island, very close to beach but sites are not on water)
Of all of these, I'd say Croton Point Park is the ideal for an S24O. It's about 45 mi each way and the route is mostly on an isolated paved trailway between the admittedly sketchy Bronx section and the hilly and busy suburban roads eight miles from the campsite. The trailway part is awesome though. You can really hammer it, the asphalt is in excellent condition and the tree canopy serves nice protection from rain, sun and strong winds. The worst on the list is Heckscher State Park and an S24O would be hell. The route sucks because it goes straight through Queens and the people at the campsite are ignorant undesirables, to but it bluntly. 90% miss the point, blasting music, blasting their portable TVs with bad reception, drinking excessively and tearing in and out of the parking area with their cars, etc. I will never return. The rest of the campsites, really any campsite, will be as bad as Heckscher on a holiday weekend such as Memorial Day and Labor Day. Floyd Bennett Field is supposed to be pretty great, and I would have gone, but the ranger wanted me to book the site IN-PERSON!!! She said they did not take phone or web/email reservations. Not sure what's up with that, but I have heard good things and of all of them it would be by far the shortest distance since it's at Brooklyn's southeastern edge. I have a very crazy project schedule until my deadline the first week in October, then I have a road trip planned for Quebec / Nova Scotia later in the month, but camping is by far my favorite activity to do with a bicycle, so I would do whatever I could to join in on the fun. Curtis On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 12:56 PM, mizrachi <mizrachi1...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Peter (et al.), > > If you're interested, the trip is likely to happen in October. > > > > On Sep 2, 12:33 am, Peter F <phfmu...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Highly interested but highly unlikely to get away with several big > > deadlines this month and small kids at home. Keep us posted though so > > those of us who can't go can fantasize about it, at least. > > > > On Aug 31, 9:27 pm, mizrachi <mizrachi1...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Any fellow New Yorkers up for a sub 24 overnighter at some point in > > > the near future? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
