New Bike Trail, with Crappy Camera

This past weekend I finally got the opportunity to ride a new trail (for me) that I had been wanting to ride for sometime.

The Jack A Markell trail leads from New Castle, DE to Wilmington, DE and it really quite an amazing trail. Despite weaving through an urban jungle and running parallel in large part to a very busy highway, the path itself is mostly hidden and really stays hidden.

The beginning of the path. One couldn't tell that immediately to the left is an industrial park/warehouse park. The entire path until the highway is like this.

Ultimately the path leads to a tunnel under I-295. It's a tunnel. I like tunnels, and it was really very quiet; one couldn't tell a very busy highway that leads into New Jersey. It's a busy highway that I generally don't like driving. On this bike path you can barely hear it.

After this tunnel the path becomes much more interesting. The first thing we pass is a "women's correctional institution" (jail). The inmates were out in the yard when I passed. I was tempted to stop to take some photos but ultimately felt that would be a little classless on my part, so I didn't. But right beside the jail is a cemetery: New Castle County Potter's Field.

A Potter's Field is a cemetery for the nameless, homeless and, in this instance, for people who died in jail and had no family to claim them. It's really quite sad.

I can't imagine anyone other than a ghost sitting on this bench overlooking the final resting spots of his comrades.

After moving on I very quickly came upon this little gem. It looks like a pull off on the side of the path, but it was overgrown and had this awesome sign and a big red rusty piece of metal that I was infatuated with.

Did I do a good job giving these images the post-apocalyptic feel that they deserve?

Finally I arrived at the bridge that crosses the Christina River (which was named for Queen Christina of Sweden). The busy I-95 interstate runs mostly parallel to this portion of the track. I remember watching this bridge being built when driving I-95 and was glad to finally be able to get onto it.

The Christina River

Because much of the land in this area is wet and marshy, and the goal of the bike trail was to lead to Wilmington, a long boardwalk was also built. It was really nice to ride on. The building in the distance is the Dupont Environmental Education Center (sic).

Finally reaching the top of the path, immediately beside the Education Center (sic), I looked back to see the length of path through the marshlands. To the other side was this neat looking railroad bridge.

The path then led into the Wilmington Riverfront, which I followed and did some exploring there, too. Unfortunately my crappy camera ran out of 'film' (re: the floppy disk was full; I apparently need to carry several floppies with me) so I didn't get any more pictures with this camera (but I do have some from my dslr that I'll share in a different post).

The entire ride took me a couple of hours, complete with some exploration and photography. It was a really nice ride, about 15 miles round trip. Next time I go I'll plan to leave my camera behind (and then I'll undoubtedly come across something where I wish I had my camera, etc etc).

(c) All images and photographs, unless otherwise specified, are created and owned by me.
(c) Victor Wiebe