Hawk's Nest, New York October 2005
After moving to Milford, PA from Hoboken, NJ we slowly got to know some of the local attractions. One of them, near Port Jervis, NY, was the short stretch of road called "Hawk's Nest" (Rte 97) which, for a short distance, becomes something more akin to a Porsche commercial from the Italian Alps rather than a two-lane road in Upstate New York. Amazingly, the road was originally etched into the mountain as a one-lane dirt road in 1859, and by the early '30s (as a WPA project perhaps?) it was paved and widened. The views up and down the Delaware River and across into Pennsylvania are breathtaking, especially in the Fall.
My memories of the place are twofold. Taking visitors on a surprise "wow" drive-throughs, it literally comes out of nowhere. Everyone who visited said they could not believe they were in a place in the eastern USA. That short stretch of road high above the Delaware River really was that amazing. The other memory was just watching motorcycles go endlessly back and forth on that curvy road at high speeds. I am sure it was thrilling, but a terribly short ride. I also wondered how many accidents there had been since it was a main road and there was no signage when approaching it: "motorcyclists fulfilling fantasies ahead".
Even if the Milford years lacked in urban excitement, they were made up for by an abundance of natural beauty nearby. I was lucky to move from there and land a job in Abha, Saudi Arabia which also had a lot of natural beauty just on the edge of the city - in fact, ditto for Duhok, Iraq. Having had such places within easy reach really made some of my more difficult times at home and abroad more bearable.