No Wawas in Mahwah

So what could Dana and I possibly do for a follow up to the gigantic road trip we got home from barely a week and a half ago. Well, for awhile, I've been wanting to go up to New York City to check out the new World Trade Center building. Currently, the building stands at over seventy stories tall, with thirty or so to go before they open. Considering the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is this weekend, what better time to go up?

Anyway, that was the plan, so I decided to use the last of my Hawaii Hilton points to book a hotel up in Mahwah. On the way up, we had a few stops planned, most of which were straight out of Weird NJ - our favorite! We ate a little breakfast and managed to get on the road before four o'clock to head up north.

Our first stop was Belle Mountain, an abandoned ski hill site. We walked up what was once the ski hill, but the trail was now overgrown. To be honest, it didn't seem very steep, either, the trail only being about a quarter of a mile long, if that. It was a nice little hike to head up the hill and back down, and on the way back down we saw the ruins of the ski lift. The hill was last skied in the late nineties, a victim of the mild winters of that time period and a general lack of interest.

Just down the road was the fabled Lambertville High School. Dana had read about it many times in the pages of Weird NJ, and it looked like a tempting place to go visit. However, the school is now privately owned and the owner doesn't hesitate to bring lawsuits against people who trespass. Additionally, there is absolutely no parking along the single-lane road leading past the school, and I feared for a moment that my car was wrecked after slipping into the sinkhole in one of the roads. So, we took a look at the school on the hill and moved on.

Next up was the Paulinskill Viaduct, a railroad bridge over the Paulins Kill river in North Jersey. For five years after it was completed in the 1910s, the viaduct was the largest concrete structure in the world. Although there are access doors that allow people inside the titanic structure, Dana and I decided to move on since the bugs were starting to get a bit thick. It was an amazing sight, either way!

It was pretty impressive. I couldn't help but notice how high every single river we drove by had crested, considering the rain that had been falling in the area lately, including two massive tropical storm remnants. There were a lot of bridges out and parts of roads washed away thanks to the high crests of the area rivers. In point of fact, this made it difficult to visit our next stop. We budged past a few "RESIDENTIAL TRAFFIC ONLY" road blocks, but ran into a terribly flooded stretch of road that forced us to skip Walpack Center, or so we thought.

Walpack was a town in the Delaware River watershed, its origins dating back to the early 18th century. The town was first mentioned in historical literature in about 1731, long before the creation of the United States of America. The area the town lay in became known as the Delaware Water Gap. In the 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers obtained the land through eminent domain for the building of a dam. The dam would create an artificial lake that would flood much of the region for hydroelectric power generation. Thus, the federal government kicked everyone out of their homes in the area (save a few stragglers), but ultimately the dam project was never executed. The land was later donated to the National Park Service, with several towns surviving with extremely low populations. Walpack is one of those, with around 16 remaining residents as of the 2010 census.

A pretty interesting story, to be certain. It was about an hour or so to get to the restaurant from here, so we got back on the road. Dinner tonight was at an Afghani restaurant, which strangely enough served some American fare as well. I got a pair of kebabs and some buffalo wings, which oddly enough went very well together. It was a great meal to end a really fun day.

Our final stop was the hotel, another Hampton Inn, a brand which had become very familiar with us. Tomorrow we'll head into the city to scope out some sights, eat some cupcakes, and pay some respect to those who died ten years ago. A good weekend already!