Mercer Meadows

Had to get a shot of the Iron Bridge over Stony Brook, and I thought of Mercer Meadows nearby as a good place for a walk with my wife and Sadie the black Lab.

It was real good to stand at the edge of Stony Brook. My home stream. 

I grew up in Lawrence where the Meadows stretch around for miles, and I was familiar with them growing up, though most of it was farmland then. Now 1600 acres comprise the park. The Mercer County Park Commission has done a great job making and maintaining trails, preserving farm buildings and equipment, and maintaining the wild spaces for wildlife, especially birds.

 

North Jersey Recreation

 

Kittatiny Ridge Frames a Good Mood

On Millbrook Road, accessed by first navigating a series of roads new to my travels, we approached Kittatiny Ridge. Trish and I got a very clear look at the face of it. The walls of schist or whatever looked smaller in the distance than they are, but still appeared prominently, distinctly off-white like marble. I said, "Matt and I climbed that ridge from the bottom when he was seven-years-old." The vertical elevation from the start of the Mount Tammany trail to the summit is 1200 feet. I think the Rattlesnake Ridge trail Matt and I climbed is about the same ascent. At the top, there's a pathway no more than four feet wide between a gigantic boulder face, and an edge over which distance drops about 900 feet to treetops and rocks. I felt very nervous walking that. My young son showed no fear at all, once standing right at the edge and looking down as frankly as had he looked at a floor. I was stunned.

Further on Millbrook Road today, views from the ridgetop felt thrilling. And after the last view passes, descent is steep and swift, Millbrook Village appearing on the right quickly. No event held by the park service today, we came to hike further up along Van Campens Brook, further than we had walked several years or more ago. I slung my camera bag on my left shoulder and carried my two-weight TFO fly rod with my right hand. We did work our way further up the Donkey Hollow Trail, but I remember last time somehow finding a trail that follows the brook closely. This time that wasn't evident. I did manage to fish the spot photographed not long after we left the village, and also cut off the trail far upstream, making sure moss on stones I braced my boots against didn't slide under them as I worked my way downhill to the water. This second spot was a nice hole, bottom four or five feet deep perfectly visible, but I felt as if I had imposed on the fish there, fish I suspect are present but had dodged me and my bead-head nymph.

Later, when I unloaded gear into the trunk, a man a little older than me came up and asked had I caught any. We launched into an informative chat about the fishing, his experience and success a lot more than mine up there. "You have to approach them with stealth."

"I did feel I imposed on them," I said. "Do you crouch?"

"Oh, yeah." And he said he wears camo. He kept mentioning the trout's weakness for bead-head nymphs, that they like the reflective gold surface on the tungsten. He wasn't fishing today, but he's done quite a lot up there.

The hike wasn't for the fishing. It was for my wife. And mainly, we came up here for that hike and for dinner at Walpack Inn. As events proved out, Walpack Inn was the main reason, but before we parked among hundreds of other vehicles and carried books into the restaurant, anticipating a wait, we visited Roy Bridge again, where I didn't fish, but did perform a productive photo shoot.

The view of the ridge as we traveled back on State Park 615 to the restaurant felt grand. Green tone recently gave way to yellow on the rusty side of the color spectrum, I could tell. Down here in Bedminster, the color tone is still predominantly green. We got a table without waiting. I felt utterly amazed, as we were led to it, at the size of this place. Where do the dozens of employees come from? It must be 45 minutes to the nearest gas station. Maybe that's hyperbole, since Layton isn't far, but Layton is a hamlet. Despite a lot full of vehicles, getting a table was no problem, the place is so big, and the food was fantastic. I had prime rib, Trish a strip steak. Each of us got baked potato with sour cream and horseradish. Doc Joe's (think it is) Hard Apple Cider is so fresh it reminds me of a Class 1 trout stream like my favorite Dunnfield Creek. The apple pie with ice cream was a huge serving for each of us. And as we ate, aside from us, a huge picture window admitted a full view of Kittatiny Ridge whenever we turned to admire the mountain.

We took a walk behind the building towards the ridge before we left. It's certainly not the highest mountain on the east coast, but to deny it if you haven't taken its challenge is cheap. And if you were to deny it and then take it's challenge, it might not be safe...

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2016/05/hainesville-pond-little-flatbrook.html

https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2014/05/blue-mountain-lake-largemouth-bass.html

North Jersey Outdoor Recreation

As a boy, Matt found 10 of New Jersey's 16 snake species in the wild, a couple of lizard species, a number of turtle species including the rare bog turtle, and numerous salamander, frog, and toad species. Not to mention out-of-state reptile and amphibian finds. I awakened a deep desire to reconnect him with this passion, and today, about a month after I thought of going, we gave it a try, but he couldn't quite remember where the Delaware Watergap National Recreation Area spot for salamanders exists that New Jersey Audubon led him to about six years ago. Lots of salamanders. He photographed many. One of the species he found we're uncertain about as to its identity, so I particularly wanted to encounter some of these. His best guess about where: Van Campens Glen. So I suggested we bring fly rods, too. We found a spot he thought might have been the place, but the ground was too dry and we found nothing, so I doubt this is where, but maybe the spot has changed.

Meanwhile, we fished a large deep pool beneath a waterfall. Very thoroughly using various beadhead nymphs. With and without small split shot. Another fly angler showed up, who told us he regularly catches 8- to 10-inch wild  browns there, his biggest 13 inches, some wild rainbows too. I invited him to fish with us, but he wanted to go on upstream to a larger waterfall. I kind of wanted to see him in action, but I fish a waterfall pool on the upper North Branch that never fails to at least yield a hit from a wild brown. We got no hits today. And we later figured these two pools of Van Campen's Brook get a lot of pressure. Today a weekday, in the middle of the afternoon someone else showed up to fly fish. You can just imagine how many times the trout in these pools get caught and how reluctant to hit flies they become.

We stopped at my favorite Delaware River spot on the way out. Poxono Island. We basked in the sunny heat a few minutes and that felt good. We didn't fish at I-80 bridge, either, where we've caught a lot of smallmouths wading in the past. Maybe it was hunger that drove us on. We took 94 "into town," finding farm fields instead, but curving through Hainesburg with no deli or stores along that short tour of a hamlet I was seeing for the first time, passing a bridge over the Paulinskill where the river looks very inviting...we drove on. Dales Market in Blairstown served us an Italian hoagie, trail mix nuts, M&M's to add to the nuts and raisins, and a coke and green tea.

When we pulled up to our favorite smallmouth spot--big ones here--and finished eating, I walked down, glanced at the water, and it informed me we were probably there to give our respects. Not because anything specific was amiss about the river's condition. It was just an impression I got. A glance like that always seems to tell me everything. We fished about 20 minutes and Matt caught a little nine-inch smallmouth.

On the way to Saffin Pond--the plan was to fish sundown there--we talked about a possible part of the day's plan we had let go. My idea was to hike up the ridge and check the copperhead den. Get photographs. We haven't been there for five years or so, and I would like to get back, but we began to realize the full area deserves more time and exploration. Neither of us could remember searching the wetlands for salamanders, years ago. There were so many varieties of frogs. We observed these instead that day a year or two before I began blogging in 2011. So maybe next summer we'll spend an entire afternoon up there.

We got to Saffin Pond as light was climbing towards the tops of trees to the east. Matt caught a largemouth a foot long. I caught four largemouths, lost another. I measured my largest: 18 3/8ths inches. All on weightless worms. Three of the bass hugged tight to wood in the water near the bank where depth gathers pretty quick. I spotted a pocket in sparse shallow weeds to catch the biggest. Another pocket yielded a small one of about a pound. All released of course.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2011/09/appalachian-trail-white-lake-and-tilcon.html

Ice Shots

  

My son and I went to Peapack Brook and Hacklebarnery State Park for a photo shoot, my having had the idea for several years now to get some shots of ice associated with falls. When we got to Peapack Brook, some swans on Peapack Pond where a bubbler keeps a little water open caught our interest, and I spent a few minutes shooting them at my feet. Then we walked over the bridge, and when we got down to the brook, I said, "Let me get a couple of shots from in front," and I took two steps when suddenly a large mass of the ice yards away I was about to shoot broke off and into the brook with a hollow thud. We laughed.

I had said last night that the milder weather might mean we could have got better shots, had we gone sooner, but Matt said it would make no difference. Ice wasn't going to melt that fast. Oh, yes it does.

We noticed lower temperatures at higher elevation Hacklebarney, and nothing had broken up. The falls of Trout Brook were pretty much frozen in completely with nothing dramatic to get on pixels, but I did a lot of close-up work on water flowing on ice formations, but having come home, deleted files I don't want, and loaded the rest into Lightroom, I'm not satisfied with what I got. And at Peapack, I decided, results might have been much better had I thought to bring my tripod and somehow set it up in front of the falls at the dam, though I doubt this would have worked with the snow and ice on the concrete. 

It's a long process of trial and error. I'm just hoping we get some more cold winters over the course of the next 10 years. I had wanted to go to Clinton Falls on the South Branch, also, but there wasn't time. It's been three years since I went there a couple of times with heavy ice on the dam, and it seems yesterday. That falls and mill has been shot so many times, it seems almost impossible to get anything original, but I don't recall any published shots of the scene with such ice; it's just that what I got three years ago didn't satisfy me.

We got back to Bedminster at 3:53. I dropped Matt off and drove over to Martinsville with my auger shaft to get those blades sharpened.

Hacklebarney State Park

Trish's idea, we rode into Chester and had breakfast at the Chester Diner, listening to NPR on the way, appreciating the very high level of journalistic report on Hugh Hefner's great influence on our culture. Also Trish's idea, a Hacklebarney State Park hike. She had mentioned both last night and I capitulated instantly, feeling only slight grudge for the fact that we hiked Hacklebarney only two years ago. I tend to strike new ground.

With little time before I will go to work, we walked to the, I believe they are, Trout Brook Falls. On the way out, I checked the map, and though I couldn't conclude for certain on the evidence that this is Trout Brook, not Rinehart's Brook, most likely it is Trout Brook. (By what I've gathered, there are wild trout in this stream, but you would have to work hard to find one.)

On the way home, we came up against standstill traffic. Alstede Farms and Cider Mill Farm are drawing huge crowds, which is why Hacklebarney was very crowded, also. I turned around, and took Hacklebarney Road back from where we came, following it out and making turns, knowing I was somewhere in the vicinity of Willowwood Arboretum, and somewhere in the larger context of Long Valley and Califon. We never found Willowwood, but did come upon CR 512 pretty soon, a road I know. I had answered a question from Trish with, "I don't know where I am," and while she fumbled with her mobile device unsuccessfully, she got nervous, so I guess I made a mistake in saying that, but I can't seem to help but elevate drama when I can. On Fairmount Avenue, a road I vaguely recognized though it still didn't make me sure of our whereabouts, eventually the image of the crossing of 512 at a church came to mind. With that church and crossing shortly behind us, I said so, but my words came across anticlimactically as I feared they would, since I spoke them after the fact. She made the point that we were lost, oh, but that I "knew" that intersection was coming up.

Hardly lost. I reminded her that back in my teens, my friends and I used to smoke joints and I would drive my Ford Fairlane station wagon up into North Jersey at night completely at random, the three or four of us finding our way back to Mercer County every time. We called this repeated-but-always-unique adventure the Space Cruise.

Trish and I connected with Route 206 in Bedminster Township 19 minutes after we had turned around.

On this last stretch homeward, I turned NPR on and then off. Johnathan Swartz played "Hey Jude," and we've heard that number as many times as John Lennon tripped on LSD. Back at home, I felt very good about the morning, felt affirmation for life to come yet, felt good about moving to Manhattan in retirement--if Trish's plan comes true--and there on that peculiar island joining mostly informal organizations and making friends with writers, photographers, artists. (And if we have some money, a boat will be docked on the Hudson.) And despite my attitude towards the Beatles (and Johnathan Swartz) minutes before, after all, songs do get so jaded they no longer make sense, despite this ooze of overfamiliarity, when I booted up this computer, it occurred to me that taking a sad song and making it better is about as central a tenet as any great philosophical mind can impart.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2015/06/dog-hike-to-butternut-falls-india-brook.html

Hainesville Pond, Little Flatbrook, Millbrook Village Outing

Hainesville Pond has been on my mind for years now, and I must have been verbally introduced by Oliver Shapiro's Fishing in New Jersey: A Guide for Freshwater Anglers, forever after intending to come here. Well, we have been going up to the Ridge and Valley on Memorial Day weekend for many years, and finally I incorporated a visit, knowing full well that this 37-acre pond is notorious for weeding in early, but hoping my son and I could fish it anyhow. Actually, the wide angle lens from which I shot the photo, above, makes the water seem more open than really is. Although Scum Frogs and the like really would work, I just didn't have the heart to make the effort today, especially with a thunderstorm coming right up behind us, and so much water out there just spells out: Use the canoe or forget it.

Maybe in March or April. It's nearly June now and this place is very forbidding this late. And very shallow. Kind of interesting to find a Jurassic Swamp up here in the mountains. 

We headed back down U.S. 206 to connect with CR 615, arrive in Layton and the Little Flatbrook, indeed find a Division of Fish & Game posting behind a local venue that apparently doesn't mind people parking and walking in--everyone we encountered friendly--and yet, to fish this little creek, you really need to bushwhack and wade upstream with no trails to guide your progress, apparently. At any rate, that thunderstorm bore down, and before we could search any further, lightning and rain erupted as we drove off, two-weight TFO and Matt's five-weight with us unemployed.

Next stop Millbrook Village, although I felt very tired, we could possibly hike up along Van Campen's Brook and at least get some difficult fly casting in. The stream is noted for wild brown trout, but they don't come easy. Patricia and I hiked up a few years ago, and though I hooked a little one, we really need to hike further and fish harder to do anything more memorable.

I got a shot of the Millbrook Village Methodist-Episcopal Church that turned out better than it looked on the Nikon's screen. God's angry with us, wouldn't you say? And so the storm clouds faithfully hint at the truth, though the rain and thunder that came as an absolute deluge I can't show you, because I didn't capture that.

Before we geared it out with rain on our tracks again, Patricia and Matt caught up with two National Park employees, who, in conversation, told them the staffed event with open doors to various preserved buildings and period dress closed at 3:00, this to my wife's sadness, but there's always next year! OK. So I might have preferred to explore some other Ridge and Valley corner, but we can go to Millbrook Village...and hike the Van Campen's a lot further than last time.

Don't get me wrong. I had a wonderful time with the history here. But once might be enough?

We got pretty far up the creek, too. And I would rather wade the Little Flatbrook, but I can't imagine Patricia slipping on those wet rocks in good conscience.

We drove on down U.S. 46, after passing through the Water Gap enshrouded with fantastic cloud configurations, and as I drove past, I got that great view up the almost vertical rocks rising 1200 vertical feet...and what an adventure that would be, to climb that. Bet you'd get arrested, too.

And down along the Delaware, where once, many, many years ago, we stopped, got out fishing rods, and Matt and I fished as his mother witnessed. Yes, we caught smallmouth bass where the river runs very deep with jagged bank boulders in and out of the water. How many smallmouths, exactly, I don't remember. But those were days my son was really into the fishing.

To Johnny's Hot Dog Stand. The climax of the trip for Patricia. Well, before we got there, again, as this is the third year of that now, I stopped at the soft ice cream shop in Buttzville. Nearly 40 years ago, friends and I always stopped here, a landmark for us, as we drove from Lawrence in Mercer County to fish, hike, and camp in the National Recreation Area.

Don't misunderstand "outdoors people." Or at least not us. We don't denigrate culture, technology, and developed means, but we do believe in progress and making things of better quality and value, the invention of new applications more appropriate to reality. And that's what it's really about for us--the real world, whether exploring local history or enjoying a world class Broadway play in Manhattan, Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Morristown, or the Van Campen's Brook, a creek which happens to really exist and is therefore significant. Or using the mobile device to get pertinent info as we travel. (I haven't bothered to own one of those yet, but my son and wife do.)

 Little Flatbrook at Layton

 Well, you can wade up from here.

 Millbrook Methodist-Episcopal Church

Walpack Valley

I'm writing The Microlight Quest: Trout, Adventure, Renwal, a memoir I intend to get published.

Natirar Hike and Photography: Mother's Day Special

Usually I make the suggestion on where to go, although sometimes an offhand reference to someplace I speak of gets tackled by Patricia. More often than not, a place she picks from my brain becomes a family tradition. Such as Hot Dog Johnny's on Route 46 near Buttzville, NJ. My idea to bring her along with Matt and me to fly fish the Flatbrook on Memorial Day weekend years ago, we've headed up there every one of those weekends since, and a few years ago, I mentioned Johnny's and she riveted upon the idea. I felt she would, once I thought of it, but I also wondered why I hadn't thought of going there with her three years before. Well, go figure. A guy in the habit of selecting spaces that fulfill his own interests...can be a little slow about thinking of those that suit others.

Not today. Mother's Day, my wife reserved full rights on where to go. She didn't want to go far, but she did want to go someplace she feels is special. When she told me this will be Natirar, immediately I thought of getting some river photography and whole-heartedly agreed on her idea. I admit I'm selfish. If I don't see some advantage in whatever I do, I'm just not inclined to be there, and very often when things aren't going my way, I find out how to turn events in my favor--in others' interest too. Best of all, things mutually work out for two or more of us together, and while--as you can see--I shot some pictures today, I knew I couldn't spend a whole lot of time at it, and although I went into my closet and reached to get the waders, I told myself, "What am I doing?" I let them be. It wouldn't have been appropriate to put them on for better river position with my tripod on her day, and even when we recently visited the Ken Lockwood Gorge, I didn't go that far.

Natirar used to be the famous Walter Ladd estate, named in 1905 after the river--actually the North Branch Raritan--that flows through near the Far Hills/Peapack, New Jersey, border. Natirar is Raritan spelled in reverse. Originally, the estate comprised about 1000 acres, and today it's a Somerset County Park of 491 acres, which seemed to draw about that many people today. It's a thriving, very popular park that includes an expensive restaurant. Situated in the Highlands, just three miles to the east and a little south, our home is on the Piedmont.

We came to hike, and I suppose we walked as many as three miles, perhaps not quite more than two, but we walked for nearly an hour-a-half, though we stopped to sit on one of the benches provided along the way, relax and talk. As we set out beyond the river, I got to thinking that my favorite hikes entail regions of the Highlands wilder and less crowded. In fact, I usually pick spots where we might see two other people during our entire outing. More than once, we've seen no one else. When we hiked Marble Mountain recently, we spoke as freely as the space around us existed entirely as our own, but as we began arduous walking today, I felt put off by so many others.

And then we reached the belly of the hike, the midway regions, and I paid peculiar attention to a group of people ahead of us; they obviously enjoyed a very nice time, speaking just as freely as we had on Marble Mountain. I felt like a suck, groping for some way out of my silent discomfort. All of a sudden, I began to talk. I can't recall what about and that doesn't matter.

Two or three minutes into conversation, I realized I'd done it again. I had dug myself a little hole on a bad premise, as if a place full of people out-of-doors isn't as good as a place that doesn't attract many, a place that doesn't have the same sort of prestige, but about which I am a snob because I know wilderness quality trumps the sort of trails grassed over with mown sod.

And now? Once again, I had taken a wrong turn and reversed the polarity. I guess that means I'm bipolar, but then that's a good thing, because I can always find my way to a better place.

We came home just in time to meet Matt after he came home from work, and Patricia looked into movie possibilities. The latest movie about Ernest Hemingway seems too cheap to bother with at all. We don't like a Nobel Prize winning novelist getting made into some sort of superficial action figure. So she decided on Sing Street, an independent film showing in Montgomery about teenagers starting up a rock band, really about the same principle poet Rainer Maria Rilke challenged artists to take up. Going all the way, never settling on halfway. The 15-year-old takes his 16-year-old girlfriend and they leave home for good, crossing from Ireland to Wales, England, in a little boat of about 17 feet and 50 horsepower to start life anew.

Marble Mountain Ice Cave Warren County New Jersey

The Marble Mountain Ice Cave occupied my mind since this time last year, and I planed on hiking with my wife two weeks ago, diverted by necessities otherwise. The weather then cold and windy anyway, yesterday turned out to be a much better day. While walking our black Lab Sadie during a recent night, I realized we could take a roundabout way towards the Phillipsburg area by CR 512 from Bedminster, through Califon, and to the Ken Lockwood Gorge, thus giving me the opportunity to take some needed river photos with spring growth fairly minimal as yet, and also to show my wife where I want to teach her some fly fishing.

I thought we would just hang out near the trailhead accessible by Hoffman's Crossing Road, but once Patricia saw the opportunity, she wanted to walk back in, so we walked at least a half mile here altogether. Just a few of the photos I shot I've posted.

We accessed Interstate 78 by State Highway 31 and eventually rode onto CR 621, exiting U.S. 22 in Phillipsburg, the trail access parking coming into view quickly after about a mile. Marble Mountain in Warren County is a ridge flanking the Delaware River, the likes of which characterize the terrain all the way down to Lambertville and below. The trail gradient is pretty modest, but after hiking about a mile when we met with the orange trail to take us aside to the Ice Cave, we had ascended at least 300 vertical feet.

The Ice Cave is no natural cave, but the abandoned Fulmer Mine, active during the 19th century when tons of rich iron ore extracted remains something of a mystery, since no paper trail left behind for future historians tracks where it went to market. The New Jersey Highlands pocked here and there by such mines, most of the forest vanished into smelting furnaces, a massive project overall which included some copper and graphite mining among other minerals as well. How they hauled rock down off such ridges and mountains, I wonder.

Rather than turn around after our hike, I drove northward on CR 621 following railroad tracks and the river to the first right turn, a distance of five miles, perhaps. Eventually, we connected with CR 519, a road familiar to me. No GPS in my car, I hope this device never comes standard with any vehicle we buy. I like to use my sense of direction, not relying on maps, either. The county road I first became familiar with during the 1970's as a conduit between Hunterdon County's Locatong and Wickecheoke creeks, where we trout fished, 519 would have taken us back into Alpha next to Phillipsburg, so I turned left onto State Highway 57 and soon made a right onto CR 625, which took us through Stewartsville.

We enjoyed a nice view of Pohatcong Creek before getting onto Interstate 78.

Ice Cave information set in front of a big fire pit.

Jockey Hollow Grand Parade Trail Hike

Angulated fence near Wick House

My wife and I hiked the Grand Parade Trail today in Jockey Hollow, actually part of Morristown National Historical Park. Many books are written on the crucial history lived out here, especially by the troops of George Washington, who suffered record cold during the winter encampment of 1779-1780, some of whom didn't make it. Washington himself was well-protected, I'm sure, though he was no stranger to the situation and profoundly concerned for his men.

I've read none of the books, unfortunately, though I would like to, and the Jockey Hollow Visitor Center has many for sale I have perused in some detail. My first experience hiking Jockey Hollow and Morristown happened back in 1973, when as a Boy Scout with Lawrenceville's Troop 28, we hiked a grueling 18 miles. I remember how tough it was, up and down hills.

Today, we hiked about three miles total, and though the day began for me with very sour feelings, waking at 1:15 in the afternoon after having stayed up to 4:00 a.m., once I got my camera out of the bag and photographed that classic wooden fence, all swiftly rose back in place for me, as the world suddenly made sense again.

For us, a real nice hike, and even though perhaps two tenths of a mile near the end of it made me feel very old, rather than youthful as I usually feel, I accepted the feeling as pretty accurate. After all, in five very short years--as years pass these days at my age--I'll be 60. So I may as well feel it on rare occasion. And then the sun angled upon us after we crested a hill and I felt vital, despite my left leg with nerves that fried from extreme sciatica, the leg feeling weakened as if the nerves simply can no longer support the muscular action fully. It's only after I've hiked a couple of miles that I feel this slight pain and unease. Done hiking, we opened the car trunk and chugged water, and upon arriving home, felt the world from a deeper sense of its peace, despite the association of Morristown with war.

Years ago, I took lunches in Jockey Hollow, while working for New Jersey's largest credit union. Doing this for about three straight years through all four seasons, developed a deep awareness of this land as hallowed ground, although I felt the affinity especially from November through winter. Land that is lush with flourishing summer life relates all too well the success of life in the present, but with the added sense of space late and very early in the year, we may know a deeper presence in the very absence of life. Usually, when we visit a place, we're only conscious of it in the context of the very thin strip of present time. But history is not just "past." Remains are in fact existential, and the present and future cannot, in fact, exist without the past. Past, present, future are what time is.

 Wick House. Here the Wick's lived...not really so long ago.

 Lots of fallen, cut trees on the Grand Parade Trail

 Kids are just as eager to meet new dogs, as dogs are.

 Approaching the Soldier's Huts from above. The four huts, of course, are model renditions. Since enough men camped here in the Hollow to fill a 400 by 300 yard space during the daily Grand Parade--a formality that kept organization intact--I wonder how many dozens of huts existed. 600 acres of forests were cut down entirely to build the huts and make firewood. 

Hut rendition interior.

Musconetcong River Gorge Nature Trail and Dinner at The Ship Inn, Milford, New Jersey

For three years or so, I've meant to hike in the Musconetcong River Gorge. We had little time after I got off work, and then after my son got off his job an hour later this afternoon, but we rounded out more than a mile of walking and a 200-foot vertical ascent on the way back, most of that at the end of the walk, which we paced steadily, allowing us to breathe deeply, rhythmically, and really know we made effort. That's a feeling I would never want to pass through life without. I reminded my wife, Trish, of her ambition to hike Mt. Tammany at the Delaware Watergap.

"Tammany is a 1200-foot vertical ascent in about a mile flat. That's climbing like we just did for another thousand feet, and in some places, a lot steeper," I said.

My son and I have done it many times, and made more ambitious ascents elsewhere. It's good to be reminded. And Trish was not dissuaded, though I didn't mean to say she couldn't do it--just sort of try to strike a balance on the issue. And on the contrary of any suggestion that she can't, she pointed out that she would have summited in 1993, had "a real hiker" taken her.

You know what it's like when your eye narrows at the corner.

"You brought no water along and didn't give me proper boots," she said.

It was 92 degrees out that afternoon...I knew with a sinking feeling she has a real point.

The Gorge descends further down to the river itself, although I don't know of trails, and we didn't have time to investigate. But the factory or mill down by the river as you approach the park on County Road 519 is really cool-looking, at least to us, and I'd like to see if I can get some photos some day.

The 30-foot Warren Glen Dam just below the CR 519 bridge is an obstruction which, once political will breaks it, will open the river to a flourishing ecology and more holdover and wild trout, although the immediate sections here aren't stocked. Surely some holdovers work there way down.

We planned to meet Matt's Grandpa in Milford at the Ship Inn. As it turned out, we had plenty time to cross the Delaware River and check out Upper Black Eddy, and then park and linger around the Inn for a few photos while waiting. The ride down CR 519 had been like nothing.

As it turned out, after five or 10 minutes, my Dad had been waiting inside, sipping a Coke. The Ship Inn has a black-painted, patterned interior tin roof, and a rustic ambiance nice to settle into for a couple of hours of conversation. The beer on tap is brewed on the premises. Mine was full-bodied, yet mellow, a nice example of New Jersey's first brew pub, modeled on the English idea, although my beer wasn't room temperature and just as well. I had been eager for that beer. The burger was good too, and the desert some of the richest chocolate I've tasted in a long while.

Gotta watch that weight!

But here's a link to yet another excellent restaurant in Milford reviewed:
http://morethanjustfishing.blogspot.com/2015/06/he-was-very-valiant-man-who-first.html

 Last big toad we'll see this year (we saw a little one further along).

 Antiques to the left and the sort of slide-out of a ridge beyond.

 Nice antique shop.

 Way back in 1978--I was 17--I drove up an hour from Lawrence to fish the Hakiokake Creek, beginning on the other side of the bridge I stood on to snap this photo, and I continued upward to fish the pool to the right in the photo and beyond into the brush and trees, long before the Ship Inn became established, but long after the Victorian era of its origin. I caught 30-some rainbow trout that spring day, and never encountered another angler.

The Ship Inn

Electric Brook Schooley's Mountain Park Morris County Parks Hike as an Electrician gets in Touch

We got to Morris County Park Commission Schooley's Mountain Park and found the trail leading beyond the chapel closed. At least that's what a rather unauthoritative sign says. No clue as to why. People like to be informed, and it gives us hope there's enough thought involved to solve a problem. Our hope is that the commission will soon repair whatever about the trail needs fixing. I really want to take my wife down to the Electric Brook Falls so we both can see them for the first time, and I can do some photography I really look forward to. The overlook beyond the falls seems interesting too.

Diverted, we found a trail down near the South Branch Raritan and enjoyed a little hike, including some mildly arduous climbing. Rocks slippery and tricky where I set up my tripod, I enjoyed positioning the camera, making sure I didn't goof up, and tending to Sadie our black Lab, who enjoyed the water and got pissed off when I moved the camera and tripod close.

All summer we've been trying to get up here on an evening after work. We finally have--but the falls elude us yet.

Instead of Patricia's favorite Old Mill Inn on the way back from Long Valley and into Chester Township, we ate at Roccos in Bedminster outside with Sadie. We didn't want to leave Sadie in the car, not even with windows down. Rather hot. Patricia ordered a huge clam pasta meal, and I pointed out that the clams with brown markings are Floridian Indian River clams. I harvested Indian River clams commercially during the winters of 1984 and 1985.

I got home and found one of my old clamming buddies had emailed with his phone number. "Call me tonight if you can." Turns out there's a reunion tomorrow, boating and fishing Long Beach Island. Not all of us will be on board, but quite a number. He apologized for short notice, but I'm just glad we got in touch. Next time we'll figure it out ahead of time. Have to work my job tomorrow.

He's an electrician.

Way back when, how long ago I'm not sure, an Electric Company functioned back in the woods, to give the brook it's namesake. And once upon a time, Barnegat Bay, Little Harbor, Great Bay yielded millions and millions of quickly reproducing clams. Don't we know it. Fertilizer, etc., has eliminated the ecology, clams gone.

Odd thing is, Barry lived across the street from me until after second grade in Lawrence Township some 60 miles from Long Beach Island. After my third summer treading clams, I lived alone on several bayfront acres, renting. Few of us treaded into the fall. On a foggy October morning, I heard and recognized Barry's voice as I worked in the water.

"Barry," I said. I couldn't see him.

A long pause. "Bruce Litton?"

"Yeah."

"What are you doing here?"

Trish doesn't want Sadie to leave us and run with the coyotes.