Re: [Paddlewise] Who We Are

 --Small World.....
 I met your father once when I lived in Hillsborough not far off 
River Road, maybe some 10,15 years ago. Some idiots in the county road 
department cut down a 250 year old Oak just so they could put in a guard 
rail where it wasn't needed.  I was looking at the carnage when he 
walked up and we had a long conversation about the area and its history.  
I also remember your house.
 I grew up in Griggstown, did some of my early paddling on the canal, 
swam in the Millstone in Cheston's Meadow, etc.  After a long hiatus in 
Florida I moved back up, and now live in Hopewell.  One of the paddling 
clubs I'm a member of, Mohawk Canoe Club, has its headquarters in the 
old Walker Stevenson house between the Griggstown canal bridge and the 
turning basin.
                    Joe Pylka
PS:  Simcoe's Raid on Millstone occurred in 1777, when he burned down the courthouse there.  
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Chris & Ellen Kohut <chriskayak_at_earthlink.net>
    To: Paddlewise <paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net>
    >>>>>>>> We launched on the Millstone River of central N.J. about a quarter mile downstream from the Griggstown bridge (across from my house).  That was the last time I appeared that summer at the family table for regular meals.  There was entirely too much interesting stuff that would wash up in the eddies of the frequent log jams on the Millstone, and entirely too many painted turtles to be caught. That part of  New Jersey was all dairy farms and silage corn back then, as landscaping with strip malls was slow to catch on.  If I had already picked through the flotsam  in my little stretch of the Millstone, awaiting the next flood, the boat was light enough for a smallish kid to pick it up on my shoulder and cross the heavily treed  no-man's land between the Millstone and the Delaware-Raritan Canal, and cross the tow-path and paddle the canal for a while.  That having been done you were teleported back to 1850 -- or so it seemed ,what with the lock-keepers quarters and the houses still standing spared by the Brits who swept through in 1812 when they burnt the courthouse. Except for the hiss of tires on wet pavement of the occasional Sunday driver on the adjacent road, all was nearly like it was in 1850:  only the sound was of your paddle drip and occasional turtle plopping off the bank as you passed too near for turtle comfort. 


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