Happy New Year! The Girl Child and I decided to kick the year off with a road trip to hit some distant portions of the East Coast Greenway trail! Our ultimate goal for this trip is to bang out as many miles as we can from the Georgia/Florida line south, for a few days until we meet friends in Orlando for a week of vacation nonsense, but we didn't see any reason not to hit a few trail segments on the way as well! We began with a stop in Rahway, New Jersey, where we walked a short 1/2 mile piece of the Rahway River Path, then drove the on-road pieces between East Grand Ave, Rahway, and Roosevelt Park, Edison, where we stopped and walked another 1.5 miles of trail through that lovely park, before ending the day with the last mile of on-road route, stopping where it rejoins a dedicated bike path on Pierson Rd in Edison, for a grand total of 10 trail miles today (2 walked, although in total we walked 4.5 miles, thanks to both legs being out-and-back, and a wrong turn that took us 1/2 mile out of our way). It was an absolute stunner of a day, and people were out in the parks in masses!
Walking route in green, driving in blue.
We also started a new sister-project for the new year associated with our Greenway expedition: we are creating these "No Bad Vibes" rocks to leave out on our Greenway legs, in memory of our dear friend, Laura, who sadly passed away this past holiday season. We have both been struggling to cope with such a significant personal loss, and have so many great memories of walking with her, we thought that leaving colorful reminders of her "No bad vibes!" mantra (which was her classroom rule for her students) along our travels would help to keep her with us, as well as cheer anyone who comes across them while walking, running, or biking.
Above: the Girl Child leaving our first "No Bad Vibes" rock for lucky passers-by to discover along the East Coast Greenway route.
Roosevelt Park, Edison
Above: this sign is full of lies. That arrow should be pointing the OTHER way. Thanks to someone's alteration, we walked 1/2 mile out of our way on an unsafe to pedestrians roadway (below). I'll be alerting the East Coast Greenway Allience, hopefully they have someone in the area that can correct the sign so others don't have the same problem. My knee certainly didn't appreciate the unexpected mileage.
Above, back on the correct path, which took us past a very cool park theater (below)! I'd love to see a "Play In-The-Park" here!!
Today's Greenway totals were 2 miles walking plus 8 miles driving, bringing our overall totals to 74 miles walked, 134 miles traversed, and 2866 miles to go! The year is off to a great start!
Looks like a great start to your adventure!
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