I found the following, which describes an area about 3-4 hours from where I live. While it doesn't contain Paso content, it does contain Ducati content and more importantly - motorcycling-in-general content. Since most of the members here aren't from *here* (where I am), this is a pretty convenient way to share some of my locale with you. This area is a lot of fun and gorgeous in a car, nevermind on a motorcycle.
Hope you enjoy the read; I get to enjoy the trip itself once in a while ...
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Pilfered (without permission) from American Motorcyclist, September 4 2002. "Escape from New York; Leaving the rat race behind along the Delaware River", words & images by [url=mailto:loliver@ama-cycle.org]Lance Oliver[/url]
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I love New York. I really do.
But the cabbie from Uzbekistan on my right is beginning to doze after 12 hours at the wheel and is squeezing me into the Volvo driven by the guy day-trading over his cellphone.
I’m on a motorcycle perfectly suited to such urban duty—a light, quick-steering Ducati 620ie. But I’m still on edge. One wrong move in this kind of traffic, and I’ll be just another road-grimed clump of debris wedged under a guard rail, stripped of all usable parts before dawn. Not to mention what would happen to the bike.
When I’m not surfing traffic, I entertain myself watching the Ducati’s digital oil temperature gauge tick upward toward infinity, while waiting in stopped traffic, in 90-degree heat, for another toll booth.
I love New York. But have you noticed how it’s a city with a cover charge? However you arrive, you pay a fee just to get in the door: bridge tolls, tunnel tolls, airport taxes. I hear there’s a way to sneak into the Bronx from the north on a surface street without paying a toll, but it could be just a rumor.
Really, I love New York, but sometimes you have to get out of town. Great roads are waiting, not as far away as you’d imagine.
The Ducati’s with me on this. I can feel it. She’s whispering, “I miss the Italian Alps. Take me to the hills where I can sing an aria.”
How could I deny her? Come, bella, let us escape New York.
The ambiance is vastly different just 60 miles northwest of Times Square as the crow flies, or 90 miles as the Ducati carves.
Along State Route 97, just north of Port Jervis, New York, there’s a spot called Hawks Nest, a stretch of pavement slithering along the cliffs above the Delaware River, that will have you thinking Western Europe rather than southern New York. A rock wall guards the edge, but there are plenty of spots to pull over and marvel at the view.
Even if you don’t live in this part of the country, you’ve probably seen this road. It has starred in television commercials for BMW (both cars and motorcycles), Honda, Saab and Cadillac.
But the road attracts more than film crews. It’s also a magnet for motorcyclists. On a summer weekend, bikes account for the majority of the traffic, with many of them headed to the Hawks Nest Cafe, a little restaurant with a deck perched over the river gorge.
“Some Sundays, over a thousand bikes go by here,” says Ron Babcock, owner of the cafe. Maybe one of every five will stop at his restaurant.
It wasn’t always that way.
Before Babcock bought the Hawks Nest Cafe in 1999, the previous owners were decidedly motorcycle-unfriendly. If riders parked on the paved part of the cafe’s lot, the owner would often shoo them off to the gravel area. Things were so bad, in fact, that Brian Rathjen, publisher of the popular regional motorcycle magazine Backroads, sat down with the owner to try to resolve the problem, but to no avail.
That all changed when Babcock, a motorcyclist himself, bought the cafe. Babcock owns a 1984 Honda Interceptor and a pair of 2001 Triumph Bonnevilles that he and his wife ride together, so he immediately went after a new audience. The first two things he did were to put up a banner saying “Bikers Welcome” and place an ad in Backroads. The crowds showed up quickly.
“We’re trying to make it the Rock Store of the East,” Rathjen says, referring to the popular Southern California bike hangout near Los Angeles. “It’s definitely one of the premier destinations in the New York area.”
On an unseasonably cool Sunday, I watch a couple hundred bikes pull in and out of the cafe’s parking lot. Nearly 100 are taking part in a charity ride that includes a stop there.
A club of cruiser riders from Queens poses for a snapshot. Dedicated bike-lovers capture the scene on video cameras. Three guys on European sport-tourers, who rode 150 miles from South Philly just for lunch, are about to head back home.
There’s no infamously segregated parking, with cruisers to the left and sportbikes to the right, as happens at some West Coast hangouts. I’m surprised not by the number of V-twins, but by the percentage that are Italian, not American. Brands and nationalities mingle freely.
Most of the riders who patronize the Hawks Nest Cafe just enjoy the view, have lunch, then turn around and go home. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to end that soon. Although the cafe has become a destination, it’s not the only reason to ride this pleasant patch of countryside.
Enough ogling bikes and digesting fries. Let’s ride.
From Port Jervis, where New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania meet, you’ve got a choice. The Delaware Water Gap, to the south, is more famous. But it’s thronged with city escapees on summer weekends. It’s also uncomfortably close to the low-cost honeymoon land of the Poconos, where heart-shaped tubs proliferate and neon signs cast a pastel tinge on the scenery.
The Upper Delaware, north from the point where the three states meet, retains more of its natural charm as a federally managed Scenic and Recreational River. There’s less “entertainment” up here, which means the lay of the land better suits those of us who make our own entertainment by exploring the world on two wheels.
The towns of Port Jervis and Hancock, New York, bookend this stretch of river, and Route 97 connects them with a scenic strip of smooth asphalt.
On any summer weekend, you see brightly colored kayaks bobbing down the Delaware, along with canoes, row boats, rafts, even innertubes. If it floats, people are headed down the river on it.
The Delaware is the only major river east of the Mississippi that hasn’t been dammed. Given a few days of free time, sufficient motivation and an extra-large, waterproof bag of munchies, you could plop your butt in an innertube at Hancock and float to Trenton, New Jersey.
Better yet, you could ride your motorcycle.
Just north of Hawks Nest, I take a side trip to check on another bird of prey. Sullivan County Routes 31, 42 and 43 lead me through winding curves and forested, rolling hills.
Wildlife is plentiful. I spot two deer grazing just off the road. Adrenaline-addicted squirrels keep me on alert with road-crossing dashes. I even pass a few wild turkeys that are amazingly unruffled by my presence, barely bothering to move into the woods to avoid me.
A 12-mile run brings me to the Mongaup Valley Wildlife Management Area. The one-room building perched on the lip of the manmade lake is actually a blind for observing eagles. Inside, posters detail the bald eagle restoration project under way here.
By raising foster chicks in the area, the project brought eagles back to this part of New York. In the winter, the eagles migrate south to find unfrozen, open water on the Mongaup and Delaware rivers for fishing.
Bald eagles are fairly easy to spot here in the winter, but only a few stay year-round. If you see one in the summer, savor your luck. If not, you’ve still found a tranquil spot for a rest break, which is never a bad thing.
As I return to Route 97 and head north again, the road dips and weaves but rarely strays far from the water. Several bends upriver, I spot the National Park Service signs for historic Roebling Bridge.
What’s the big deal about a bridge?
Well, not just that it’s 154 years old, the oldest surviving wire suspension bridge in the nation. What’s more rare is that you can ride across a bridge that once carried boats across, and above, a river.
It was necessary back in the 1800s, when barges on the Delaware & Hudson Canal carried coal from northeastern Pennsylvania to New York City, while the Delaware River was used by loggers, who floated timber downstream. Where the two crossed, the inevitable collisions fomented more fistfights than profitable commerce.
So the canal hired John Roebling to design a bridge. It carried the canal across the river until the canal closed in 1898. For a while after that, it was a toll bridge, but today you can ride it into Pennsylvania for free.
If you do, all you’ll find on the other side are a few quiet country homes and the Zane Grey Museum.
The museum, open weekends, occupies what was once the home of the author, who became famous writing novels about the American West in the 1910s while living within listening distance of the burbling Delaware in the East.
Route 97 carries on northward, skipping past and through river towns such as Narrowsburg and Callicoon. On the northern part of its run, the road leaves the cliff-hugging curves of Hawks Nest far behind and tends toward gradual, sweeping bends that make a relaxing ride on a motorcycle.
The end point is Hancock, wedged into the valley where the West Branch and East Branch of the Delaware merge. The native Iroquois called this place “Chehocton,” which means “wedding of the waters.”
Today, it’s the kind of place where the Country Bake Shoppe Restaurant on Front Street (you can’t miss it) serves up breakfast any time of day, and there’s not a franchise-homogenized food item in sight. Just my kind of place.
So what’s next? On north into the Finger Lakes region? Or loop south on Pennsylvania Route 191 before cutting over to Callicoon on back roads?
Me, I decide to see how the west bank of the Upper Delaware compares, so I cross the river, make a left turn and aim south.
Either way, I’m miles from Manhattan, the air is crisp, the roads gently curving, the asphalt is smooth and the Ducati Monster is singing contentedly on a beautiful day.
Did I mention that I love New York?
© 2002, American Motorcyclist Association