803. Paterson, Passaic County (NJ02)

The courthouse was predictably impressive. Why would I be surprised at that? The courthouses of the East Coast have been quite nice up to this point (though Maryland probably doesn’t count). And why would I expect less from a city founded by the ten-dollar founding father himself, Alexander Hamilton? Not that he had anything to do with this courthouse, which was completed in 1903. And not that this is the current courthouse, which was completed in 1968, with another floor added in 1974 (aesthetic trash, y’all).

We collectively had two goals. The fellowship wanted to go after New Jersey’s oldest cache, gerbiL cacHe, but after considering where we had to end the evening, we decided to abandon that goal because it was really out of the way (far northern Passaic County) plus a hike once we arrived. On the other hand, I wanted to see a great natural wonder unlike anything I had ever seen, and since there was one downtown, I couldn’t resist. Krissy4884, Godot, and I arrived first, parked, and saw the reason Alex had this place built.

Welcome to the Great Falls of the Passaic. Well, at least as much of it as I could see. From the parking area, it was impressive, but in a cruel twist of fate, the observation bridge was closed. I couldn’t see it in all its glory, so I took what I could get.

I had seen small waterfalls before, but nothing like this. And, of course, there’s an EarthCache there, along with a Virtual! But since the observation bridge was closed, we couldn’t get to where we needed to go to get some of our answers. Right around that time, the others (4everlyn, Kittydcota, and Razorbackgirl) also made it to the falls. We all had a talk about what we wanted to do. All except for Godot, who we had not yet noticed was missing. We discussed finding a cache, but a rough truth came to the fore. Nobody actually liked being in Paterson.

There’s no nice way to say this, but Paterson was pretty unpleasant. It was pretty much every bad stereotype there is about New Jersey that didn’t involve weird suntans or a shore. It was dirty, littered, and tightly packed to the edge of being claustrophobic. Paterson was not a place that I enjoyed, and the others enjoyed it even less. A quick poll decided to get the heck out of Paterson, with or without a cache. The “without a cache” part was what concerned me. We’d come so far, and to intentionally leave without a cache was somewhat anathema. But I was outvoted. Besides, so many places had been set aside already that day. One more wouldn’t kill anything. I already had a county in New Jersey. I would survive. We made preparations to depart when we finally noticed that Godot had gone missing. We gave him a call to make sure he hadn’t fallen into the river or something terrible, and he resolved the mystery. While we had all been talking about our next moves, he had walked all the way around the falls the long way, to where the EarthCache and Virtual answers could be found! Our trip to Paterson would not be in vain! Of course, we still didn’t have a cache suitable for New Jersey’s County Challenge, but I didn’t care. I’d have to come back to the area anyway. I could get a proper cache then. All that mattered now was that we were headed out of New Jersey on the way to…