The Long Way to Lambertville

Posted By Rich-A sunny weekday during semester break afforded me a chance to take a few back roads through New Jersey on my way to pick up work from the Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville. Instead of heading up Rt 29 from Washington’s Crossing, I entered into New Jersey on I-95 using the Scudder’s Falls Bridge over the Delaware River (and although I am well acquainted with the Pennsylvania side of the river at that point, I have never seen a waterfall in the vicinity I consider large enough to name a bridge for. Maybe the name comes from the NJ side…?)
I took the North off ramp of the second exit on the interstate, and almost immediately I was obliged to take a detour, so it became a rather easy task to take a road less traveled. Well, one less traveled by me, anyways. Seems like all of the roads in this part of the country have heavy traffic.
The afternoon sun cast long shadows over nondescript office parks and even more nondescript housing developments that appeared like odd growths on the former farmland. Styles of the houses reflected boom times from different eras: post WWII Cape Codders , sprawling ‘50s ranches, split levels from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and odd “transitional” styles from the 80’s and later that we have come to know collectively as “McMansions”. Following the detour signs, I ended up in Pennington and stopped at a service station to buy a road map of NJ. After studying it briefly, however, I decided it wasn’t a very good one: for instance, it completely omitted Mahwah, a larger northern NJ town near the border of New York Sate and the home of inventor and guitar great Les Paul. Mahwah is also a landmark I use when racing up I-287 to the Tappanzee Bridge and over the Hudson to get my daughter at college in New England.
I drove north out of Pennington through intermittent collections of dwellings that ranged from modest farmhouses to the aforementioned McMansions, houses that seemed ridiculous by contrast with ostentatious displays of ornamentation and imitation stone work. Eventually I entered the delightful town of Hopewell, NJ. I had been to Hopewell once before with a good friend who grew up there in the 1950’s and early 60’s, and it appears that not much has changed since then. My friend gave me the cook’s tour of the place on that day and I was glad to return and have a chance to take a few pictures. I parked my truck and walked a bit, heading towards the Hopewell train station. It is a grand brick Victorian structure, well preserved both inside and out and situated nicely by itself on the edge of town. However, it appears one of the things that have changed in Hopewell since the 1950s is that trains no longer make regular stops there, although the track is still active; a CSX freight rolled through and the echoes of the noise on the frame houses sounded like a jet aircraft taking off at Newark International. I walked around town for a while and shot some reference pix, and on a quiet side street (pictured above) a barking dog came running quickly across a yard at me. I was a bit alarmed when it became evident the dog was not restricted to the yard by an electronic device attached to it’s collar, but the dog’s wagging tail and happy bounce up to me showed me I had no reason to be afraid.

Greeted by a happy dog on a quiet street in a small town on a sunny afternoon; felt kind of nice to be in Hopewell right then.