A staunch supporter of the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor trail, Lincoln Steward was looking for a way to bring some attention to it.

On June 25-16, the Nazareth resident departed with a friend on a round-trip continuous 284-mile bike ride, hitting all of the D & L Trail they knew they could access."I ride on this trail system a lot, both for recreation and getting from place to place," Steward said. "There still chunks of it missing and I wanted to demonstrate this entire system does get used and it would be worthwhile to connect it all up. I decided to see if I could ride the entire thing in both directions in 24 hours."The trail is 165 miles spanning from Luzerne County to Bucks County. Steward's first day consisted of a round-trip ride from Easton to Bristol, Pa. On Sunday, he rode from Easton to the D & L Black Diamond Trailhead, just south of Mountain Top in Wright Township, and back, including a stop in Jim Thorpe.Despite giving himself 24 hours to complete the ride, Steward and his friend finished in 22."I tried to give myself a relaxed pace since it's a fun ride, but all my friends were joking with me that it would never take 24 hours," Steward said.Before the ride, Steward had seen the trail in smaller chunks, but never all in one trip.One of his favorite parts, he said, is going through the Lehigh Gorge."It's one of the most beautiful spots," he said. "You get to see the boaters and kayaks on the river. It's a neat feeling to ride through there. The southern spots are also in good shape and well connected. There are one or two spots that you have to jump out because of a railroad tracks or something like that."In Carbon County, efforts are underway to connect more of the trail including a pedestrian bridge in Jim Thorpe. It would link 60 miles of D & L Trail north in Carbon and Luzerne counties to the 105 miles of D & L Trail in Northampton, Lehigh and Bucks counties.Steward's training began in January. He started riding 30 miles per day."I continually ramped up the pace until I did a 200-mile single-day ride in early June to make sure he had the endurance," he said.It was after moving back to the Lehigh Valley from Colorado in 2014 that Steward really gained an appreciation for the trail.His local bike shop hosted a lot of group rides, one of which got him hooked."I loved the overnight ride," he said. "We would go from Easton to Jim Thorpe, headlights on the whole way, and stop at the Turkey Hill because it was open 24 hours. Then we would turn around and be back in Easton by sunrise. That first taste of the trail system blew me away."