27.2 mi / 11.6 mph / 225 ft. climbing
Home: Cape Henlopen State Park

We were out of our AirBNB at 8:50am, and repeating yesterday’s ride south and west to the other side of the finger of Cape May, except this time we went a bit past Uncle Larry’s house to the 10:30am ferry that would take us to Lewes, Delaware.

We had made advanced reservations, which unusually are required for even foot passengers the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, so we bypassed the office and just rolled straight to where bikes are supposed to wait. A worker then asked for our ticket, which I didn’t have, and the PDF on my phone wasn’t good enough, so I needed to go back to the office to claim it, and he also said he needed to search our bags. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was serious or if he was just making some sort of bike joke, but Rett said that while I was gone he at least went through the motions of looking inside our bags! At the counter, the clerk wouldn’t give me tickets without my photo ID, which I needed to go back to the bike for, and then she said to ask “security” about where to wait. There were uniformed police officers in the parking lot, and even on the boat itself.

In short, this was by far the most security- (or, security-theater-)conscious ferry that we’ve ever been on (and we’ve probably been on 20-30 different ferries). In this current “ferry tour” we’ve been riding on the Atlantic Coast, I’ve been saying how well ferries and bikes play together, and at least some of that feeling comes from the contrast with the security procedures involved in modern air travel. Even though the procedures here didn’t have much practical effect on us, I might not associate ferries with “ease of travel” if they were all like this.

I theorized that the proximity to President Biden’s home, just a few miles from the dock on the Delaware side, might be the reason. That doesn’t really make any sense, because there is plenty of easy access via the unsecured road network, but checking cyclists’ bags doesn’t make any sense either, so who knows?

In Delaware we rode a few miles to Cape Henlopen State Park, where the girl in the office said that they don’t deal with the campground, and I needed to call this number for day-of bookings. “Or, I can just do it online, right?” “No, you need to call the number.” Well, I just did it online at reserveamerica.com and it worked fine so…? Though then riding directly to the campsite I had reserved, I was illogically nervous about whether we’d done something wrong by not stopping by a booth to physically register.

Nonetheless we set up camp as quickly as we could and then set off with unloaded bikes to get loaded on the Brewery Loop! This is an idea that the guys at Anglesea Brewing in Wildwood put in our heads, and at our first stop we arrived at the same time as some other people who came across on the ferry with their bikes, so clearly it is a thing!

Exiting near the southeast corner of the park, we got within a few blocks of Joe Biden’s house (after being within a block of Bill Clinton’s house and directly in front of Trump Tower a couple months ago), and then hit the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk where Dennis and I had met the Barlows at Dogfish Head’s brewpub 14 years ago. This time, Rett and I would be hitting Dogfish Head’s main brewery tomorrow, so with the idea of pacing ourselves, we passed without stopping and instead continued on to four other breweries, where we got a four-glass flight to share at each one.

All four of the breweries were high-quality, had a varied tap list where IPAs were a minority, and they all felt quite-reasonably priced compared to what we’ve been used to (helped by the fact that Delaware has no sales tax). This corner of Delaware was incredibly bike-friendly, with off-street bike paths, and giant bike-lane shoulders paralleling the bike paths. In short, I could totally understand why this “Brewery Loop” is a thing!

Well-lubricated, we rode back to camp in the mostly-dark, and laugh-screamed when we had a near-collision. No, it wasn’t a car; there was barely any traffic, and the wide shoulder kept us far away from it anyway. The danger came from the grass on the other side, where our headlights suddenly revealed a deer with a significant rack of sharp-pointed antlers aimed at us from just a couple feet away. As we crawled into the tent, Rett remembered that we had run out of stove fuel a few days ago and had never refilled it. Crap, that would make breakfast a challenge tomorrow. Oh well, we’ll figure that out in the morning!