Yesterday I tagged along with the NJ/PA Acura NSX club on their annual River Run outing (we have friends in the club). About 40 NSXs showed up. I brought my MGA. It was great fun but I would have stood a better chance of keeping up in my Miata (not much better). I could do ok on the twisty turns but when the roads ran up a steep hill it was all over. I was in front of the "caboose" (a club member with a long range business walkie talkie keeping the pack together) and we would fall far behind the group as the MGA futilely tried to accelerate up a steep hill at 15 or 20 MPH. 80 HP vs. 265. Still we had a great time on this wonderful route the club members had mapped out. Until the end that is. We were in 3 groups of about 13 cars, and our group made a wrong turn, going left when we should have gone right. As we cruised down this road, we past a county truck painting the white and yellow lines on the road. It was going about 5 MPH. About 1/2 a mile behind it was another county truck with a big sign that said "wet paint - do not pass - do not cross lines". And behind him were about 20 cars doing 5 MPH. I thought to myself "glad I'm not in that pack". Well guess what, a few minutes later our leader turns around and heads back the other way and we have drive about 2 miles behind this truck at 5 MPH. It was about 20 minutes of too fast for idling in first gear, too slow for idling in 2nd gear, and in bright hot sunshine for most of it. This was pretty much the only traffic we encountered in the whole route. It was still a great run just with a hot finish.

The route started in the parking lot of a park off Lodi Hill Road on the Delaware canal and ended at a restaurant on Route 32 (River Road). For those local to the area interested in the route, I have attached a PDF with the driving directions handed out (it was the R-S segment where we got stuck behind the line painting truck). They are a bit tricky and our group leader did make a couple of wrong turns, so I have also remapped the route in Google and taken a screen shot of that. Here is a link to that screen shot (to preserve the fidelity):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11775077/NSXCA_River_Run_2012.tiff

Russ

Thanks for the tip. I am always looking for new roads to try out. I was just exploring the area between Manyunk and north to where River Road ends. River Road there is pretty good, but there are some great roads leading from Ridge Ave to the river. They are about 1-2 miles apart there and it feels like you are driving through Chester County (but still in Philly). I am still searching for a good route from Philly to Newark or Newcastle. I have tried along the west side of the river and it is not great. Some nice stretches of road but much unavoidable highway. I came back on 896/old balt pike/1 and it was better until route 1 and pretty out of the way. I have not tried your side of the river yet. 896 coming north out of Newwark is another really nice road. I am sure you know route 23 from philly to Conchohockin, super fun and close to me.

I just realized the link on my first post doesn't work. Here is a new version attached to this posting.

Russ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2012 06:47PM by MGARuss.

Mike,

I test drove a BMW Z3 3.0 on those roads from Ridge Ave to the river and there are some great roads.

I grew up (in Bryn Mawr) driving on Rt 23 but never thought of it as a good road for LBCs.

Why do you want to get Delaware? Getting a good route out of the city southbound could be hard.

Russ

Thanks for the info.....I'm always looking for great drives in the area so I'll investigate this route in the near future.