Category Archives: New Jersey

Oct 05 0 comments
New Jersey, Uncategorized

Incredible Breakfast Makes for Great Days

We woke up in the dry, warm Pottery Zone downtown Phillipsburg and headed out to a little restaurant Cindy had recommended: Cafe Verde on South Main Street. Wow. This could be my favorite place I’ve ever had breakfast. I ordered the French Toast on Challah Bread and Alan had Chocolate Chip Pancakes. The coffee was fresh and hot and locally blended, and the food was to die for. We got to chatting with the owner of the restaurant, Michelle and she said they were about to celebrate one year of business. Congratulations Michelle! You deserve your success… keep the great food coming! We only wish we could have Cafe Verde every morning on our ride! Anyway, if you are in the area, you HAVE to stop there. Delicious!
We finally got our full selves onto our bikes and rode 44 miles to New Hope, PA. On the way we met a group of cyclists called Team Genesis (from a local bike shop) who gave us all sorts of advice on touring in the area, and where the best muffins were on our route. 

So at their advice we stopped in Milford, NJ, and though the muffin shop was closed, we had an amazing lunch at The Good Oven. 

We pressed on through Frenchtown, NJ and got to New Hope as the sun was setting. Unfortunately for us, New Hope is one expensive little town! There were no campgrounds, no motels, nothing under $100 for a night, so we asked the local police about camping on town property- that was a no, and by the time we figured all this out, it was dark and super unsafe to ride, so we grabbed a slice of pizza and regrouped. 

Next to the pizza place was the Bucks County Playhouse, putting on a production of Phantom of the Opera. Now, I don’t think I’ve ever met a theater person I didn’t like, so we figured it was worth a shot. We rolled our bikes over and chatted with the folks in the box office who passed the word around and soon the whole theater knew we needed a yard to camp in! A gentleman named Jim who is a volunteer usher at the Playhouse offered to throw our bikes in his truck and take us out to camp in his backyard- so we gratefully accepted and headed out. Once we got there it was pretty chilly and he offered us an air mattress in his heated garage… deluxe! He even invited us to watch the debate with him! 

The next morning his son Jim came over and we had a delicious Dunkin Donuts breakfast before getting back on the road. Thanks so much Jim! We really appreciate it!

Oct 05 0 comments
New Jersey, Uncategorized

A Short Ride

We left the beautiful Hotel Belvidere in the morning and had a light day of riding. We stopped to photograph and talk to a man who told us all about how he and his neighbors were being made to leave their houses by the Pennsylvania Power and Light company across the Delaware. The houses flooded regularly and PPL (who owned the property) had decided at the last flood that the houses were “unsafe” to live in. These property owners had only two weeks before they had to be out of their houses for good, and Jim and his dog Lassie were staying until the last minute.

As we went on down the road, we saw houses built way above the ground to minimize flood damage. 

We continued on and found ourselves in the town of Phillipsburg, NJ. We hit a bookstore across the bridge in Easton, PA and were lucky enough to meet Cindy, who owns Pottery Zone on the main street in Phillipsburg. She is a cyclist and artist herself and offered us her pottery studio for the night. 
It is a beautiful space, with paint your own pottery, drawing and painting rooms. We were extremely lucky to have it for the night when some good sized storms rolled through. Thanks so much Cindy!

Oct 03 1 comments
New Jersey, Uncategorized

New Jersey

So around NYC, New Jersey gets a pretty bad name. Lots of people live there and commute in, but you’re always hearing jokes about how dirty it is and how there’s nothing cool there. We beg to differ:

Ta-da! Yup, NJ is beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Covered bridges, old railways, ghost towns and winding roads through cornfields and mountains. Here’s Alan preparing for what we thought was a hill:
but turned out to be an enormous mountain. Six false horizons. Two and a half miles later, we finally hit the top.  

The whole “mountain with six false horizons” thing was pretty crazy, especially since, as you might have guessed from the last post, we had a pretty minimal breakfast. In fact, we just had Powerbars dipped in Peanut Butter and split the Coke that the super nice family had given us the night before. So we were feeling pretty weak for this hill of death:
Yikes.
But we got some nice shots along the way. You can check some of them out on the Photoshelter page. 
We came up on some guys who were bird-watching along the Delaware and got the chance to interview them and take their photos for the project, and when we finally made it into a town with food, we devoured basically the whole menu before continuing on the the town of Belvidere, NJ where we spent the night at a really pretty inn. Funny story there…
We got into Belvidere and the afore mentioned pretty inn was a little pricy for our taste, but there were no campgrounds, it was supposed to thunderstorm all night and frankly, we were beat. But Alan remembered a little sign on the other side of the Delaware that read, “Restaurant, Bar, Inn.” So we went over, and rented a room before being led upstairs (over the bar) to a room that was about 10×10. Now, we don’t have a problem with small sleeping quarters, our tent is pretty small, but this? Well, this was a whole different ballgame. Stained linens, a slanted ceiling with cobwebs and wood paneled walls through which we could hear our neighbors chatting about Rachel Ray’s Macaroni with Hot Sauce. We didn’t even sit down- just skiddadled out of there ASAP and booked a room in the pretty inn (we still haven’t had our account refunded from the first place… we’re skeptical that’ll ever happen). Live and learn. Guess you get what you pay for. And the moral of the story is, bring food with you, so you don’t get too tired to find good accommodations on the cheap, and maybe, just maybe, don’t trust that all “hotels” are habitable. 
Oct 01 1 comments
New Jersey, Uncategorized

New York/New Jersey

Otisville, NY is where we spent our first night in our tent. Otisville is not a very large town, with a population just under 1000, but it had a nice campground and we spent our first night learning about tenting in heavy rain (thanks to hurricane Kyle- the very thing we were trying to avoid by getting a lift to NY from Boston). Let’s just say it is a good thing the campground we stayed at had dryers for 25 cents/10 minutes.
Fortunately for us (and our spirits), the countryside heading from Otisville through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is amazingly beautiful. This is just a little taste of the views we were treated to on our ride:
Unfortunately, amenities are sparse to say the least, and when night was falling and we were pulled up to the only restaurant in Walpack Center, NJ only to find it was closed… well, we got lucky running into this family visiting the area from Long Island, NY:

They were also looking to eat at the restaurant, and as we chatted in the parking lot, they were incredibly generous and insisted on us taking some of the snacks they had in their car so we could have more than Powerbars and peanut butter for dinner. They made our night, but we were so exhausted and hungry at that point that we forgot to ask their names! If you’re out there reading this, shoot us an e-mail at prjcttandem@gmail.com so we can properly thank you!!! 
 See, they made our night because the next town with food was 30 miles away, the sun was going down, our legs were done pedaling and we had just seen TWO beautiful, stunning, incredible black bears not more than 5 miles away from where we were planning to camp… which was really very cool, but a little unnerving. 

So we rolled into our campground as the sun was setting behind the mountains.
Parked our tired bikes.
And feasted on Fritos, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Powerbars and Peanut Butter (Fritos turn out to be really delicious when dipped in peanut butter)…

… before hanging a bear bag with our leftovers and passing out exhausted.