D&R Trail

Carving a path through Central NJ’s river towns, farming communities, and industrial zones, the Delaware & Raritan Canal Towpath Trail follows the D&R Feeder and Main paths across the Garden state.

I cycled the entire trail with my buddies Pete and Eric as a casual two-day bikepacking trip in fall 2024, a counterpart to our thru of the D&L earlier in the year.

I’ll be frank – the D&R is not the easiest trail to camp on. We chose a two-day trip as an easy introduction to bikepacking, but there aren’t a ton of resources out there on how to tent camp this trail. The main issues are twofold: overnight parking and camping locations.

Parking overnight is tricky. Traveling West to East from Frenchtown to New Brunswick meant leaving a car at the end of the main canal and parking cars at the beginning of the feeder canal. The state park does not allow overnight parking at official lots and I was informed that ticketing & towing were likely if I tried. I ended up calling around to local businesses and finding one at the start and one at the end that would allow overnight parking. A simpler option, if feasible, would be to have a friend drop riders off and pick them up at the end. In Frenchtown, you may also be able to secure an overnight parking permit from the town, and in New Brunswick there’s always the option of stashing a vehicle in a parking garage closer to the city center.

Camping is also a bit challenging. The midway point of the trail is in Trenton, with no reasonable places to camp and not many hotels near the trail if you’re inclined to sleep in a real bed. Some options might include Mercer County Park, which is a several mile road detour east of Port Mercer; or Washington Crossing State Park at the Philips Farm area, much less of a detour but also much closer to one end of the trail. I lucked out with friends with a home right on the trail and a backyard grotto that I was graciously allowed to camp in.

You could, of course, do the entire trail in one day, but what’s the fun in that?

The rest of the logistics are simple. This is easy, flat riding with more food and amenities nearby than you could ever need. For the most part, the trail is clean and beautifully maintained, but there is a decent amount of broken glass on the trail as it passes through the center of Trenton, so a spare tube and patch kit are a smart inclusion in your supplies.

After leaving one vehicle in New Brunswick and driving 45 minutes to the start of the trail between Milford and Frenchtown, we loaded up our bikes and stretched our legs in anticipation of day one. It’s always a bit strange driving from one end of a trip to the other, realizing along the way that you’ll be doing the same trip in reverse under your own power. For the D&R, this thought is sharpened by imagining the canal boats patiently plodding along at a few miles an hour, much slower than our cycles.

As of late 2024, the bridge between Frenchtown and Milford is actually out, so we started just south of the actual trail start. We began our ride by heading south on Rt. 619, then hopping on the trail right at 7th St. in Frenchtown.

Frenchtown is a perfect little river town that’s experienced a lot of growth in the past decade. We weren’t hungry, but this would be a great breakfast stop early on, and Artyard in town is one of the premiere art centers in the area.

Bull’s Island is one of the first sites that the trail passes, home of one of the two offices for the state park. The most interesting feature here is the pedestrian suspension bridge, linking to the D&L Canal Trail on the Pennsylvania side and enabling looped rides along either side of the river.

Stockton is the next river town on the trail. Here we see a bit more evidence of the railroad history of the feeder canal trail. Although called the “towpath”, most of this portion runs on the Belvidere-Delaware “Bel-Del” railroad, with the actual mule towpath on the other side of the canal. We stopped for a bit to check out an abandoned passenger car rusting along the side of the trail.

After 15 miles, we came upon Lambertville – a must-stop on the trail. A charming, artsy village, the town is famous for its antiques shops and has a bustling restaurant scene. We grabbed a pint at the Lambertville Station, then did a bit of antique browsing at the People’s Store, and finally hung around Union Coffee for a while. Lambertville and its sister town New Hope across the river could easily be the subject of an entire weekend trip, but after two hours we had to be on our way, continuing south on the trail.

The portion of the trail south of Lambertville is one of the busiest but also perfectly groomed. A neat mix of crushed gravel, cinder, and dirt makes the trail cloudlike to ride on. Just outside town, we stopped to check out the breakwater on the Delaware, bristling with fishermen on the perfect autumn day.

The trail quiets down farther south near Washington’s crossing, and begins to show more signs of industrialization and population, with highways crossing and passing through the Trenton Country club. Eventually we reached our destination for the night – my friends Ang & Chris‘s backyard – a beautiful grotto that we were generously allowed to crash in for the evening, complete with a putting green, stove, and incredible bar setup. I wish all campsites were so perfect…

After setting up camp, we headed down the road to the Revere Restaurant for a classic Italian American dinner, then headed back to our tents to get some rest before day two.

After a phenomenal night’s sleep, we had a lazy backyard morning complete with brunch thanks to our wonderful hosts. Packing up, we headed back to the canal trail and started our ride into Trenton proper.

The trail portion through Trenton is underwhelming but short. Trenton itself is a quiet city without much going on in its center, and the trail here splits into a Greenway portion and a canal portion – we split left on the greenway. The one thing to watch out for here is detritus and glass on the trail. Unless you’re running tubeless (and maybe even if you are) it’s worth bringing a spare tube and patch kit in case of puncture.

This area is where the “feeder” canal ends and the trail turns northeast along the original main D&R canal. It’s easy to understand why this was such a critical commercial byway in the 19th century as the canal bores a nearly direct route from the Delaware River to the Raritan Bay, allowing critical coal shipments from Pennsylvania to feed the furnaces of a rapidly growing New York City.

For a few miles on the main trail, the surroundings are mostly industrial, with warehouses, old mills & factories, and commercial buildings on the Rt. 1 corridor surrounding the trail. We took care on the several busy road crossings here as traffic whisked by.

The trail crosses Route 1 via the 2003 truss bridge, and rapidly becomes more scenic and wild north of here.

Nearing Princeton, the trail becomes busier again, and is dotted with historical locks, lockhouses, bridges, and aqueducts for the canal.

One tricky bit about the ride in this area are the cobblestone spillways, built with large stone blocks from nearly two centuries ago. On a bike with suspension or fat tire bike riders might glide right over, but we made a habit of dismounting and walking on some of the gnarlier spillways.

Pedalling further down the trail, we detoured off the trail at the Rocky Hill parking area and rode up Washington Street to the Rocky Hill Inn. A perfect lunch stop on the trail, the Inn has a fantastic menu and taplist. We enjoyed a hearty meal and break, then set out to ride the remaining 20 miles towards New Brunswick.

As the sun began to drop for the day, it cast a golden tone over the trees along the trail.

Near Bound Brook, the Millstone River meets the Raritan and widens significantly. The trail gets rougher here, with more spillways and far more rocks instead of smoothly graded gravel. I can only assume that the shallow trail section between the large river and the canal floods often, sweeping away smaller stones and leaving rocks, old bricks, and other rough patches.

Finally we neared New Brunswick. In its last stretch, the trail becomes busy once more with joggers, walkers, and cyclists from Rutgers and town. Before long we had reached Landing Lane and its bridge over the Raritan River, the end of our trip. We stopped for a few minutes to cool off and admire the views, before heading back to my car and wrapping up our trip.

I really enjoyed my D&R ride. While the logistics make it a bit odd and it’s not super long, it is an enjoyable, diverse, and scenic tour that slices a path all the way through the Garden State.

Go bike it!