North Jersey Weekend

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For the pass few years I have gather a few of the willing and headed away on a bike trip. I had a couple different ideas for this year trip out of state but for a couple of reasons could not get it a big trip put together this year. Laura had mention that she wanted to ride up the Delaware and ride Old Mine Rd. After looking at a couple different routes I couldn't find a ride worth doing. It however put the idea in my head that it might be fun to revisit some of routes up north I haven't done in a few years.

So that's how this years bike trip ended up in being to North Jersey. It was a simple trip. We headed up early Saturday morning to the Delaware Gap to do  ride around Old Mine Rd. Then stayed over night and did a ride around Hope and Tranquility with a stretch along the famous Shades of Death Rd.

There were five of us Laura, Larry, Jack, Ed and myself. We lucked out with perfect weather. It was a little chilly at the start but is was sunny so it warmed up quickly. The ride along Old Mine Rd was hilly and scenic. You could not ask for a better day to enjoy the views. The road up here are also as close traffic free as it gets. The only thing that detracted from the ride was a few spots where the road was so beat up that is was hard to find a clear path.The worst part was a the beginning  and end of the ride when we had to climb to and from Millbrook Village where we started. It was so rough that Ed actually lost his water bottle in the first couple of miles. It not only fell out of the cage but rolled off the road and in to the woods never to found again. The climb back to Millbrook was even worst.  It was a steep 400 ft climb in  just over a half mile on a road that was more potholes than pavement. Last time I did this climb on my old Myata I had to stop half way up to catch my breath. This time I was able to make it up but almost fell a couple of time because of the bad road.

Despite the few bad patches of road it was a beautiful ride. Although Old Mind is next to the Delaware you don't actually see the river most of the time. We did ride over into Pennsylvania at Dingmans Ferry to hang out by the river.

On Sunday we headed to Allamuchy to ride around some of the nicest roads in this part of the state. Fall is in full swing up here so the leaves have started turning and the colors were vibrant. The most scenic spot were around Kittatinny Valley State Park where we made a slight detour to check out the lake.

This a very rural area which make it a good place to ride. The only problem is that there is almost no places to stop. NJBikeMap has a food in Johnansonburg but when we pulled into town it looked like a ghost town and the only sign of life was a person on a horse standing in the middle of the street. It was truly a one horse town with out any food store.

From there headed to the famous Shades of Death Rd which is connected with a number of scary stories  that end badly. We stopped at the end of the road to take a picture of road sign. Laura did her usual dramatic pose.

We then headed up the hills of Jenny Jump forest which only had one tough spot but also had a killer downhill. From there it was a short slightly uphill ride back to the start. After a quick lunch we were on our way and the trip was over.

The last few times I road up in North Jersey it was by myself so it was fun to do these rides with other people.