The Carriage House at Culver Lake
We travel to beautiful northwestern New Jersey, stopping first for lunch at the Carriage House at Culver Lake, a nice little German restaurant overlooking the southern tip of Culver Lake. Our preference would have been dinner at the Carriage House, taking advantage of its full bar, but the prospect of an inebriated long drive home in the dark decides lunch for us.
There’s an expansive view of the lake from the tables along the back windows where we sit. The waitstaff is friendly, the interior pleasant, the cuisine outstanding, with classics like Hungarian beef goulash and wiener schnitzel on the menu.
Glacial Trail at Kittatinny Valley State Park
Fortified, we head south to Kittatinny Valley State Park, which sits adjacent to Lake Aeroflex (named very unromantically after the company that acquired the lake in 1957). It is the deepest natural lake in New Jersey at 110 feet, carved out by glaciers. We choose to walk the Glacial Trail, which runs along the shoreline for half a mile before turning inland. Here we wind past enormous, house-size boulders that were deposited during the last Ice Age.
Hope
There’s still plenty of light by the time we finish our hike, and so we keep up the German theme by stopping at Hope on the way home, a small town of fewer than 2,000 that was founded by Moravian Germans in 1757. The Moravians only lasted about 50 years at this site but left behind wonderful stone architecture that still stands today, including a grist mill, distillery, church, bridge and meetinghouse, most of which are still in use, though for more modern purposes like the charming Inn at Millrace Pond, a popular spot for weddings.
With headstones so old they cannot be read, the cemetery sobers us. Lives lived and seemingly forgotten, even by the elements. But then we find markers with women’s names who died in their twenties possibly from childbirth. Just steps away are stones for children who lived for so few years we can count them on one hand.
It’s been a rich, meaningful day as we ponder the opposite poles of glacial deep-time against the transitory nature of human existence.