The theme for today was crossing Philadelphia. While I still expect to be in urban/suburban areas for a while, I did make it into and out of the center of America’s sixth largest city today.

Overall, navigation worked fairly well. Most of the way inbound I used a route (https://www.adventurecycling.org/cyclosource-store/route-maps/delmarva/) from Adventure Cycling. This seemed to pick a combination of smaller roads. Only one spot did they send me the wrong way on a one-`way street.

Outbound, I tried someone else’s route from RideWithGPS but ended up with tried and true – Google maps on the phone, writing instructions on a napkin.

It was ~45F and a few drops this morning. Just enough to put on my rain jacket and then sweat into it. The first six miles brought me to center of Wilmington where I picked up the Adventure Cycling route. Little streets, sometimes commercial and sometimes residential. Not all flat though (2000ft climbed today most in the morning). A lot of school buses and many many traffic lights.

I have been seeing signs for “East Coast Greenway” for a while and at some point also saw Philadelphia signs.

I missed a sign for crossing from Delaware to Pennsylvania – though I could tell by license plates on parked cars. However, I didn’t miss the Philadelphia sign. From here more urban and busy streets.

My route brought me across the heart of University of Pennsylvania. No riding here, though I was happy for a break.

Now I needed to find the Liberty Bell. It was downtown near Independence Hall. There was a National Park building to hold it and tell more of the story. I couldn’t go easily with my bike so I took the photo at the top of the page outside through the glass.

I went 17 miles outbound after the center of the city. A small amount of paths like this but most on streets. Again a lot of row houses, some very commercial strip development and some quieter streets.

Later in the afternoon, traffic seemed to get quite busy. Without much difficulty, found a motel for the evening.

So far, I have stayed in more motels owned by Patels (3) than I’ve seen state capitols.

Strava tells me 52.13 miles today, 5:45:22 elapsed time and average speed of 9.1mph with 2021 feet climbed and 4002 calories burned.

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