Rockaway, Worthington State Park, N.J.

by Joan

Les was such a nice host that he even offered to leave his house unlocked, in case we were too lazy to get up and leave by the time he and his wife went to work. But that seemed a little extreme, so we got up when they did, and left at a decent hour.

First stop: a diner! After eating fried rice for breakfast in Indonesia, fried noodles in Thailand, steamed buns in China, and coldcuts! in Eastern Europe, Eric and I were definitely ready for a good old, two-egg diner style breakfast. So after leaving Les's, we rode just long enough to find a beautiful New Jersey diner.

Inside, we were in heaven. Booths everywhere! We sat down with the menus. The choices were dizzying. I had a hard time deciding. I'm not sure if it started that day, but by the third or fourth day of the trip, everytime we went into a diner to eat, I couldn't decide between the French toast and the two egg special, so I got both. Just for me. Eric did too. So we were both eating two breakfasts, every day. Katy was more restrained. She just ate one.
 

Thanks to Les's detailed New Jersey road maps, we were able to find some great back roads through western New Jersey. We also saw something that looked pretty disturbing. On the map, there were many roads leading west toward the Delaware River, which forms the border between N.J. and Pennsylvania, but few that reached the river. From Pennsylvania, there were also a few roads leading east into New Jersey. But most of the Pennsylvania roads ended abruptly before the river too. Why? There was a huge bluff on both sides of the river, and it was too steep for the roads to go down.

We started calling that bluff "the wall." We didn't want to scare ourselves or Katy. But on the other hand, we didn't want to play down the fact that we had to climb a huge wall to get into Pennsylvania. We could have gone through the Delaware water gap, a natural cut in the wall as the name implies, but the roads leading that way had more traffic than we wanted to deal with. We balanced traffic versus the wall and chose the wall, though Katy was a little more uncertain of the decision than Joan or I.

As it turns out, this last leg of our bike trip, from New York City to Pittsburgh, was some of the hardest riding we've done anywhere in the world. It's viciously hilly--you cross the Appalachians. It's a great training ride for anything else. In terms of difficulty, it's right up there with riding Hawaii (the big island), Maui, and that granddaddy of all bike tours, Tibet.

It turns out there was more than one wall on the way to Pennsylvania: one just before the Delaware River, and one after.

Les's maps were almost too good. As we approached the first wall, we stuck to the tiniest roads on the map, and one of these turned out to be so steep that it's no longer in use as a road. Instead, it's kind of a hiking trail. That part of the road lasted for about half a mile, before connecting back up with the main road.

When we got to the base of the trail, none of us could really believe we were supposed to ride up it. Eric and I left Katy at the bottom while we walked ahead to see how bad it would be. We walked all the way to the top, to the main road, and then back. When we returned Katy was snoozing. It was a really hard day for all of us. We all ended up having to push our bikes up that disintegrating asphalt trail. We even had to lift the bikes over huge, fallen tree trunks. At the top, it was a relief to be on just a normally steep hill.

Although it was tough, the ride over the wall was pleasant. Soon we rode into Worthington State Park, which is gorgeous. A lot of people use it as a launching spot for canoe trips down the Delaware. The Delaware was wide and brown. The current was almost undetectable to the eye. The sky was gray but the air was hot and humid. A sticky haze hung over the water. It really seemed more like a wide bayou in that weather.

We rode on a really pretty back road for miles before we got to a camping area. It turns out, you're supposed to go through some difficult registration process to camp there.

When we arrived, we didn't see any office open, so we road around the locked gate and just grabbed one of several empty sites right on the Delaware. The site came with its own picnic table and fire ring (both expected in the U.S., but almost unheard of in Europe). We took showers in the bath house, made noodles for dinner, nibbled on Cracker Jacks and collapsed.

Next: U.S. Chapter 4, Poconos ho!

Pennsylvania Main Page  World Trip