Phillippsburg, NJ to Port Jervis, NY:

May 23, 2012

Which state are we in?

We had a very meager breakfast at the Phillipsburg Inn, Raisin Bran with whole milk and coffee from a machine. Fortunately, we found a nice little deli in Belvidere where we had a nice mid-morning breakfast. It's always hard to find a place where both of us can find the kind of food we like. Rhona is a vegetarian which presents challenges in convenience stores, while I'll eat anything I can catch. Rhona made friends with a pickled hardboiled egg in beet juice. Back on the bike, just thinking about how it looked made me shudder enough that the tandem shimmied. Oh well. I thought that we were in the Delaware Water Gap yesterday because we were cycling in a valley, in a gap between the mountains and the river in the gap was named "Delaware". Technically we actually entered the National Recreational Area today, and to be fair, the gap was more striking, reminding us of the cliffs in the "Narrows" in Cumberland, MD. The route had us cross the river a few times, so we switched back and forth between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey is the Delaware River. Go figure.

The route took us back to the New Jersey side. The road narrowed and at one location a stop light was installed so that traffic would only proceed one direction at a time. There was almost no traffic in the middle of the week so it must have been a surprise to the guy waiting in a pickup truck at the other end of the section when our tandem came riding through. We hadn't tried to trigger the light, but I'll bet he thought he was sitting there for five minutes because of us.

We ended in Port Jervis tonight which is probably in New York, but we failed to find a "Welcome to NY" sign along any of the roads we traveled on our way to our hotel. All along I thought Port Jervis was in Pennsylvania. Go figure.

Today's route had many more hills than yesterday and very few services. In fact, after entering the 40 mile long recreation area I only remember a few camping areas with bathrooms and one restaurant which may or may not have been open. We actually had motorists stopping to ask us if we knew where anything was open. Maybe we looked like Lycra clad locals, what with the tandem bicycle, the Vermont cycling jerseys and the WVU flag pennant trailing on the back. For the last 25 miles it was a matter of grinding out the miles and focusing on the beautiful scenery. Rhona marveled how much this part of New Jersey looked like some of the pretty West Virginia mountains.

When we finally arrived in Port Jervis it took us a while to orient ourselves and to try to find a hotel. While we parked in the shade, Pete called to tell us he had tried to set up a Skype call at granddaughter Sophie's request. When we didn't answer the phone, she cried. Obviously, the solution was for us to get to our hotel so that we could do a Skype call to them immediately. While we called we smelled terribly and could hardly stand ourselves, but that is the type of sacrifice you make for grandchildren.

Once again our bicycle oriented Garmin GPS sent us on a convoluted route to the hotel but this time it worked out well. For the second time in our last two long bicycle tours we found ourselves in the middle of a soapbox derby race. Rhona snapped this great shot as we pushed the bike up the hill along the course.

I'm typing this on the lobby computer (the keys in the keyboard are actually stickyyyyyyyyy (darn it)... I'm scrubbing my hands when I get back to the room. I'm going to try to upload a few photos from the cellphone, but the uploading and caption editing process is usually kind of glitchy, so I usually give up after just a few. Also, some of the best photos today were taken with the digital camera and I won't be able to upload them until the end of the trip.

Today's ride: 81 miles (130 km)
Total: 528 miles (850 km)

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