Winter in NJ II

Claudia

13 years ago

S now! And more snow… photos. As promised in my previous post, here are more photos from last weekend’s winter in NJ.

On Saturday my friend Gem and I agreed on the phone that if the weather (for once) stayed cold and nice we would meet for a photo tour. We didn’t really know where to, but I was sure things would fall into place (a thing I learned from or with my friend Ute in Australia). And they did. Sunday, literally, I opened my eyes and noticed through the blinds that it was clear and the sun was shining. Great! So, I got up and sent a facebook message to Gem. Around 9 I got David out of bed to have breakfast with him, which is kind of our thing to do together on the weekend, and afterwards I geared up. Packed my photo bag, you never know what you might need. Packed my ski pants, according to Gem it was only 4 °F up in Newton – brrrrh, -15 °C for those of you, like me, used to Celsius. In Whippany it was only -8 °C or 17 °F, practically warm, when I got up. With the sun out the temperatures changed rapidly and we were in for a beautiful, sunny winter day. At times we didn’t even bother putting on our jackets. Oh, and the ski pants never saw the light of day.

I picked up Gem and we were on our way. Coincidentally the Sparta Camera Club had an organized tour for this very Sunday to check out abandoned barns in Pennsylvania. Sounded really interesting, but being an hours drive away and the meeting was at 8 am… sorry, not for me. But it kind of sparked us to also drive into that direction. After all from Newton it really is only about half an hour. What is half an hour, right?! After not even 10 minutes we had our first stop. We saw a bright red barn against blue skies and the white snow. STOP! Pull into the snow covered driveway, get out and shoot. 20 minutes later and we were smilingly on our way again.

Only to stop again five minutes later at Culver Lake to take a closer look. And I could hardly believe it, there were lots of people standing on the ice… ice-fishing! I had never, ever seen that. Seriously, never. We walked onto the ice to take in the gorgeous panorama and passed a few abandoned ice holes. I’d say that the ice was easily over 5 inches deep. You should see the drills the people use to get those holes. Amazing. As were the ice formations beneath a roof where the sun melted the icicles and it dripped down on the plants underneath.

Next stop: Dingmans Ferry. Which is not really a ferry, I assume originally it was, but a bridge over the Delaware River, the border between NJ and PA. Driving over the bridge we saw that parts of the Delaware were frozen and there were big ice blocks floating downstream. There was really no question that we needed to stop to take a closer look at that. Here are some of those photos. We probably spent more than half an hour here. It was beautiful. Another angler was here, sitting in the sun and admitting that if he caught something it would be the bonus for enjoying such a beautiful day.

Our only washout of the day were The Bushkill Falls. We should have checked, because they were closed for winter. Bummer – we were both really looking forward to see some huge ice formations from the waterfalls. Oh well. So, we decided to head back to NJ and finished off our photo tour with a quick stop at Waterloo Village. There were lots of people walking in the park and taking in the clear winter air. We took photographs. Not of waterfalls, but some beautifully bizarre and abstract ice formations. And by the time I got home, the sun had set and I had a happy smile on my face and lots of winter photos on my disc. Winter in NJ can be really beautiful.