Hike #907; Manville to Branchburg

Hike #907; Manville to Branchburg

1/3/16 Manville to Branchburg Dan Lurie, Lerch (Kralc Leahcim), Jim “Uncle Soup” Campbell, Stephen Argentina, Tom Petruccio, Laura Allen Cunningham, Justin Gurbisz, Teun Ott, Shayna Michaels, Doug DeGroff, David Li, Pat Horsch, Susan L Duncan, Diane Reider, Sue DM, Corey Kuus, Bijoy Mechery, Tim Bolastig, Danielle King, Laura King, Jenny Tull, Matt Staley, ?, and ?.

Frelinghuysen Graves

Our next hike was a point to point trip focusing on the Raritan River and it’s many very important confluences between Manville and Branchburg. Some of it was stuff I had done, but a lot of it would be filling in the blanks with things I’d always wanted to do.
This one has been on my short list for a while, and when our friend Cindy Simmonds invited me to her birthday party at a bar and grill in Branchburg, and I didn’t have a definitive hike scheduled for this weekend, the choice was obvious to fill in with that.

Frelinghuysen grave

We met in the morning at the Shop Rite in Branchburg, then shuttled to our start point on the south side of Manville. I missed the turn on the way out there; the roads are so condensed there it’s hard to follow the gps quickly.
We found a good parking area along state land, just off of Millstone River Road at the south of Manville to park. This was about where I wanted to be to go and check out the little historic cemetery just off of Schmidt Street.
Stephen met up with us a bit late, and parked initially at the pizza place right next to the cemetery.
We went in and saw the two largest graves, that of two men both by the name of Frederick Frelinghuysen, early land owners and very prominent names. The elder Frelinghuysen was a General in the Revolutionary War, as well as an attorney. The graves were large and flat topped vaults with long epitaphs on the tops of them. They were still well legible for their age.
The epitaph of the elder Frelinhuysen reads:
Entombed beneath this stone lies the remains of Frederick Frelinghuysen, Esq. Major General of the military forces and representative in the General Assembly of this, his native state. Endowed by nature with superior talents, he was beloved by his country. From his youth he was entrusted with the most important concerns until his death. He never disappointed her hopes. In the bar he was eloquent and in the Senate he was wise, in the field he was brave. Candid, generous and just, he was ardent in his friendships, constant to his friends. The patron and protector of his honorable merit. He gave his hand to the young, his counsel to the middle aged, his support to him that was feeble in years. To perpetuate his memory, his children have raised this monument, a frail memorial of their veneration to his virtues and of their grief and their loss of so excellent a father. He died on the 13th of April 1804, aged 51 years.

Susie noted the wording on the tombstones was rather humorous due to the antiquity of th ewording. The epitaph on the younger Frelinghuysen reads as follows:
Sacred to the memory of Frederick Frelinghuysen, Esq. Who died on the 10th day of November, 1820 A.D., aged 33 years. He was called from time in the strength of his days: yet he had lived to good purpose. After receiving the honours of a Graduate in the College of Nassau Hall, he entered upon the study and practise of the law. and soon attained to an elevated place in public esteem and confidence. His intercourse with the world seemed always to be animated by that heavenly principle, which seeketh not her own. He was a friend to the poor and manifested to a life of constant and liberal charities that the children of affliction held a strong claim upon his sympathy and benevolence. In all the social relation he was the delight and ornament of his friends and ... with his memory be precious to them. His mind was early imbued with a solemn sense of religious truth which exhibited its salutary influence in his private and public character. Few entertained a deeper reverence for the principles of the Gospels of Christ. He loved the gates of Zion. As death approached the beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon his soul and his faith triumphed in the security of the everlasting covenant. He has left the savour of a good name.

The cemetery itself was quite interesting. Other very old graves from the 1700s were remarkably well preserved.
This was called the Van Nest-Weston Burying Ground, and it has forty two known burials within it.
As we stood, a plan came in for a landing directly above us. That was quite a shock over head, and unexpected.
We moved on from here down the road a bit, and reached a Krauszers food store where I recommended everyone stop for some drinks or snacks, as we would not be seeing anything until we get to the border of the town of Raritan. Most everyone went in, most to use the restroom rather than buy food. While waiting, Lerch and I went off to search for a possible route to bring everyone to our next point of interest, Lincoln Avenue Park. We headed onto Wilhousky Street, which had a parking area for Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park, though the canal was on the other side. We found that the Royce Brook flowed under the road before it’s confluence with the Raritan, and we assumed we could bring the group through that way.

Dam on the Millstone

We walked down a path between the two bodies of water, and there was a nice old dam there. I figured this would be a really good route to follow, and went back to let the others know, while Lerch went ahead to scout out some more.
I got back and realized Stephen had left his car at a bad spot; one of the gas station attendants at Krauszers said he’d be called to tow the car if he didn’t move it. I had Stephen more the car to the D&R parking lot we’d found, and we moved on between the confluences.

Crossing Royce Brook

As we followed the edge of the river, I was disappointed to find that there was yet another channel to the Royce Brook, that we didn’t have an easy crossing after all. Actually, it was easy for most of us to cross on the nearby log, but not the entire group would want to do so, so Lerch took those who wanted to cross it over, and I led the others back the way we came up and across the road bridge, then to the north along South Main Street into Manville.

Underpass of former Reading Railroad, with the older bridge filled in to the left

I was actually happy I went the way I did in retrospect because of the cool stuff I saw that probably most wouldn’t really care about.
The Reading Railroad once passed through town, and is still active freight today, but as we approached the underpass, I noted that the earlier road underpass still existed, but was filled in just to the west of the current one. We continued to follow the highway to a fence, where we kept to the right.
Just past a building with a slope to the brook, there was a path up to the tracks. I figured we’d use the railroad tracks to get over the Royce Brook quickly, then descend to the others at the park. This proved to be interesting because there was a set of wooden steps on the other side descending to the creek. It had obviously been used by fishermen and such as a pedestrian route quite a lot at some time.
One of the steps was busted on the way down, but we handled it fine. After getting to the bottom, we had to fight through some weeds and climb through a bunch of fallen trees and branches, then climb up a steep and loose slope to get to Benjamin Street. This was definitely the harder of the two routes, but not for everyone.

Train bridge, steps, and slope fun

We soon found the others and entered Lincoln Avenue Park. I wanted to be on the shore of the Millstone River, but the center of the park had a swath of wetland separating the path along the river from the one further away. We had to turn right, back the way we came for a bit in order to get across where it was dry.

Millstone River at Lincoln Ave Park

Once we got to the other side, we turned left, following the Millstone River down stream. There were people walking the circuit around the park, which had some wet spots because the paths were pretty much just grass. When we got to the end of he grassy area, another path went into the woods continuing down stream along the river. We followed it.
Unfortunately, this path did not last too long. We got to a small stream inlet and weren’t able to really continue easily. Someone’s back yard had a foot bridge over the water body, which would allow us to continue along the waterfront, but aerial images were showing like this wouldn’t pan out well.

Out of Lincoln Ave Park

Lerch, Justin, and Susie continued in that direction anyway, and I chose to again take some of the group back the way we came onto the other path to where the grassy area was. We followed the grass to the right, and then saw someone doing exercises up in the weeds above. A small path led over a short bit of wetland, then up to the end of South Bridge Street. We headed up, and then turned right onto Boesel Ave. Soon, we reached Bank Street and turned right, then left again on another bit of Lincoln Avenue. This was as close as we could really get to the Millstone for a bit, though we found out we could have sneaked through better.

Crossing

Now looking at the maps, there would have been a better way to go, but we missed it. We headed into the woods when we got to Cooper Ave, and followed a bit of an ATV path. Then we bushwhacked along a wetland and found a log we could climb across. This took some time, and it would have been better in retrospect to go a different way.

Log!

Still, we managed to get across, one way or another. Some tried different logs, Pat actually took her shoes off and waded across.
Once we were all across, it was much better. We headed through some light woods to a woods road, turned left, and reached an intersection. A right turn there led us out to the confluence of the Millstone River and the Raritan River.

Confluence of Raritan and Millstone here

Once we got to this point, we turned back the way we came to follow the Raritan River down stream.
The woods road was terribly muddy, which made for difficult footing. It was probably worse than it would have been covered in ice. I tried hard not to fall, because I wore one of my nicest black trenchcoats made in Italy, which is from a thrift store of course.

Railroad pinch point

As we continued along the waterfront, one of the girls fell in the mud, but pretty much everyone else made it through okay. Some of the trails closer to the river itself had more grass and were easier to walk.
More and more ATV trails came from all directions as we got closer to the railroad tracks. This area had always fascinated me, because there were so many of them.
I had spent many of the early days of he hikes in the rural Warren/Sussex/Morris counties in NJ, and Northampton, Pike, and Monroe in PA. As I continued eastward, it was this exciting new thing. My first hike to Manville was with my friend Skyler Jermyn, and we went into lots of little Polish stores. We had been hiking the former Lehigh Valley Railroad, which is one of the lines that crossed the bridge coming up ahead. Manville is just about the last place you can get away with walking that line before you’re into railroad police craziness.

Rail bridges

On that hike, Skyler and I followed the tracks to the Chimney Rock spur to the north, from the former Lehigh Valley line, then headed back on the opposite side of the Raritan. It got dark and we ended up having a tough time following another spur from another bridge to get to the former NJ Central tracks, now NJ Transit to the north. I recall happily celebrating with him drinking wine in a bush of an apartment complex when we finally got out.
The mess of railroads that come together at this one area is staggering.

Chimney Rock spur bridge

There is a “pinch point” where all of these different lines come together. The Central Railroad of NJ is now NJ Transit from Finderne toward the Raritan, on the other side. Just south of there was the former Lehigh Valley Railroad, then the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. We passed under the two bridges of the latter two. We then reached the bridge of the spur line to Chimney Rock. Justin and others all went up to look around at it. Half of this bridge is now a roadway access while the other half is still tracks. We continued no under this bridge, then headed out to pass beneath another one, the former spur line from the CNJ line which serviced the creosote plant in Manville.

This is an area that is vastly different now too. I had never walked this side of the river before, but the other side I had done both in the dark and the light. It was in this area that Commando Tom filmed part of his first promo video for the group back in Autumn of 2008. The bridge looked much the same as it did before, but there was a new fence on the south side, because the former creosote plant was now a super Wal Mart center.

Justin high up

We continued beneath the rail spur bridge; I was hoping that we’d be able to get up on it, but it didn’t work out that way because the fences were now too big on the south side, and it was far too exposed from the retail center.
The muddy terrain continued bad for a while, then we reached North Main Street, which becomes Finderne Ave. We passed beneath and then climbed up to the top of it. Justin continued to climb to the top of a pedestal on the edge of the bridge over the Raritan while everyone was on their way up.
From here, we continued across the bridge, and went for a side trip. A right turn across the road and to the south of a commercial building on a trail led us to the old Van Veghten cemetery.

Old Van Veghten Cemetery

The old cemetery contains the interments of several of the Van Veghten family, who first settled this area. Michael Van Veghten settled in Somerset County in 1685, then purchased the land in this area for his family farm.
The cemetery is now very forgotten, and it looked far worse than even the last time I had been to it. At the time, it was overgrown, but not too bad. This time, it was locked up and none of the weeds inside had been kept down. There were still nicely preserved old brownstone graves I would have loved to see closer up.

The group at Van Veghten Cemetery

We turned around from this point, and started heading back the way we came, to North Main Street.
I had been sick since the night of the Gettysburg hike, and still didn’t feel well the morning of this hike, but then was improving quite a lot. We reached North Main, crossed, and continued on Van Veghten Street through several commercial complex buildings.
It’s interesting that the Derrick Van Veghten House still stands amidst these behemoths of buildings. We reached the historic house and I gave the group some more history.
The signs on the Van Veghten House as we approached read circa 1720, but the original portion of the structure likely dates much earlier.

Van Veghten House

Derrick Van Veghten was said to have been born in the house in 1699, which would mean the home was originally constructed in the late 1600s. Michael Van Veghten purchased the land in 1694.
It’s amazing the house still sits on it’s original location. Stephen commented that the house reminded him of the historic homes we discovered while hiking along the Delaware Bay on the Perimeter trips.

Historic view of the Van Veghten House

In 1798-99, the house served as a home to Quartermaster Nathaniel Greene, and some of the Continental Army camped on the farm, at the same time as the famous Middlebrook Encampment.
Greene in correspondence stated of General George Washington during a visit, he danced with Mrs. Greene "upwards of three hours without seting [sic] down"

Van Veghten House

We continued from here onto a trail that descends to the wetlands beyond the house. There is a long looping trail that passes through the wetlands here.
I was happy to see it at least was open. When we happened upon this the first time it was closed, but we only found out when we were leaving.

Van Veghten House view

We looked up and had a pretty good view of the Van Veghten House on the bluff.
We then followed a trail along the far edge of the fields. There were some washouts still left over from past storms, but nothing we couldn’t walk over. We continued to the far east side of the trail system, where it turned to the right to follow more closely to the Raritan River. Here, we came across the big old tree that we had climbed on, and Tom had filmed for his promo film. This too had changed, as about half of the giant tree with it’s broad, low lying branches had died, probably due to the flooding that had happened either during Sandy or Irene.

Half dead tree

We continued past the tree, and the trail turned to the west, still somewhat parallel with the Raritan River, but still not well within sight of it.
We reached a fork in the trail, and kept to the left out across a small water outlet, and to some sort of an open parking area. Another trail led off of the back of this, rather informal looking, along the Raritan. The river started coming into view at this point. The Torpey Athletic Complex is just to the north of that point, and just beyond that we came to the fields full of sheep. Commando Tom also made another good video, a Mr. Buckett themed one (our friend Jim Mathews), with the music of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is”, and he had cut to a scene of the sheep on the chorus. It was a hilarious video, but taken down by youtube for copyrite reasons.

Trail along the Raritan

We continued across this open area closer to the Raritan River, then emerged at some sort of a compressor building with an access road out to the Peters Brook Greenway.
I had not done one of my longer hikes on this greenway in the daylight yet, though I had run a recent night hike on this section. We continued along the river on the trail, which led us out to South Bridge Street. The parking area that used to be at the end of the trail here was now closed off by rocks or something. We continued from here out along the road to the crosswalk at Rt 206. We crossed, then turned right for a short while until we reached the former railroad crossing.

Former South Branch of the CNJ RR

The railroad that crossed here was formerly the South Branch of the Central Railroad of NJ. I had run a hike on this about eight years prior, from it’s start in Flemington to it’s end in Somerville. The former junction site is now the parking area for Somerville Station. We followed this right of way, now a power line heading to a former bridge site over the Raritan and to Duke Farms, only a short time, then turned right onto a woods road through Raritan River Park.
The woods road was only good for a short while, then we came to a rough spot. We ended up skirting someone’s back yard briefly, and headed down a slippy slope to a tributary inlet. There was a deplorable foot bridge over the tributary, which I hastily crossed, immediately followed by Lerch.

Deplorable bridge

Teun opted not to cross the bridge, and I’m not sure who went with him, but they followed Rt 206 north to get to the supermarket we were going to. The rest of us headed across the bridge.
It was frustrating to the point worth repeating over and over again that just about everyone crossing did not follow our directions not to step in the middle of the bridge. The bridge was made up of two old utility poles with playwood placed in the center. The plywood was bad, and so it was necessary to put our weight onto the pole sections only. The one on the left was the best. Each person crossed, and we repeated “keep to the left”, but most everyone would place a foot or two in the center. I cringed each time thinking I would see someone’s foot go through, and they’d tumble helplessly into the water. Pat was the last one over, and I think she might be the only one who crossed it correctly.

Raritan trees

When we finally got over the bridge and back on the woods road on the other side, Doug, Danielle and her sister were all climbing all over the interestingly growing trees out toward the river.
Lerch and I watched the woods road, and after a couple of man holes determined that we were following a buried water or sewer right of way. We continued on this to the open park section and a driving range. Lerch grabbed up tons of golf balls and threw them into my bag, which still bore the weight of tons of golf balls I threw in there myself the previous time we hiked through a driving range on a night hike.
We headed across Orlando Drive to reach the Stop and Shop and I told everyone to take about a half hour and go and get some food.

Nevius Street Bridge

Everyone sort of dispersed, and somehow to my surprise most people ended up at Subway. When I got back there from Stop N Shop, Doug had treated to sandwiches, and he left me a piece, which was nice.
I had not been hungry, and had barely eaten anything all week with being sick, so I needed to get something in me.
From this point, we continued west parallel with Orlando Drive. Danielle and Laura cut out early, to walk back through Manville because of a previous engagement, and Pat got a ride back. The rest of us made our way along the road to the historic Nevius Street Bridge, built in 1886. Our route was not to cross the bridge, but i wanted everyone to see the handsome through truss style structure.
The bridge is pedestrian only, and was replaced by the John Basilone Memorial Bridge just upstream of the current structure, by where the dam used to be over the river.

View up stream from Nevius Street Bridge

Nevius Street takes it’s name from Petrus Nevius, who was the first of a family from New Amsterdam (New York) to settle in the Raritan Valley, son of Joannes Nevius who emigrated to that point in 1651.

Historic view up stream from Nevius Street Bridge

Everyone went over the bridge thinking we were continuing that way, so I had to call them back.
On the side where we started was the former route of the Raritan Power Canal. The canal was constructed in the 1840s to power industries in the Raritan and Somerville area. Only the first bit of it was filled in from Nevius Street and past the new bridge, where a pedestrian tunnel has been built beneath.

Historic view at Nevius Street Bridge

The remainder of the three mile power canal remains intact, and was the next part of the hike.
Heading back from the bridge, we could see a castle like structure to the left. This is a part of the Doris Duke estate, and was some sort of water pumping station. On the other side, we could see one of the canal outlets to the river intact.

We headed back to the other side, turned left, and continued beneath the tunnel under the new John Basilone Memorial Bridge.
Just beyond this point, and to the right, I pointed out the famous statue of John Basilone, which depicts him holding the sixty pound machine gun he single handedly used to fend off Japanese troops during World War II battle of Guadalcanal. Basilone died in action in the Battle of Iwo Gima. Rather than take more promotions, Basilone stated he was a “simple soldier” and chose to go back after Guadalcanal. He was a resident of Raritan.
Just past this is an historic marker denoting the Old Yorke Road, the historic road route built on the earlier Native American trail.

Crossing the weird way

At the start of the trail on the Raritan Power Canal, the foot bridge was still closed off from our previous visit, necessitating finding our way around. This time, we all walked across the crest of the spillway dam from the canal to get past.

The rest of the trail was fine. It sort of looks like a towpath canal, but was never used for navigation other than recreationally.
The river still remains deep looking below the canal in this section, despite the removal of the dam. I walked with Lerch and told him about the long breaks we’d spent here while hiking, using the rope swing off into the river.
The trail was particularly pretty when we came to the point where lots of tree roots are exposed to the surface.
We next reached the old truss bridge over the Raritan Power Canal, but this was not an original one for this site. I stopped the group again to tell everyone of the interesting history of it.
The bridge was originally built for the Hibernia Mine Railroad in 1879, in Morris County. It was then moved for re-use as a road bridge in the 1890s to Somerset County on Mill Lane. It survived use until recent years when it was removed, and the after restoration, re-erected as a pedestrian bridge over the Raritan Power Canal.

Hibernia Mine Railroad bridge

It is the oldest steel bridge in Somerset County, and one of the only bridges like it to have been built for a railroad.
The first time I came across this bridge it was just sitting along side Old York Road near the power canal. I walked up on it from the other side, not knowing what it was. I had also hiked the entire Hibernia Mine Railroad without knowing it ever had a bridge like this.
From this point, we did not continue on the power canal. Instead, we turned left, along the paved pathway that remains closer to the Raritan River.
The path reached an access road, but then remained a very pleasant route along the waterfront.

Dam on the Raritan

It continued through a nice wooded section, then was along an exposed field. The whole section went by very fast. We continued from the field section to yet another woods section, then came to a side trail to the left which goes to a small but high volume dam.

Uncle Soup found his road

This dam is just down stream of the confluence of the North Branch and the South Branch of the Raritan. We couldn’t quite see that confluence from this point, but we re grouped here before continuing on.
The Raritan Power Canal was again above us, so we climbed to it’s edge, then continued up stream along the Raritan until a side road came in from the right. We couldn’t continue along the river from this point because there’s too much private land and wetlands. We ended coming up at a dead end road that led us back out to Old Yorke Road, where we turned left, then passed Campbell Court on the left, much to Uncle Soup’s satisfaction.
Then, we crossed the North Branch of the Raritan on a bridge within Confluence Reservoir State Park, an authorized but never built reservoir on the confluence. I stopped everyone on the bridge to point to the south. Here, we could actually see the confluence of the North and South Branches of the Raritan. We then continued on along the road over the bridge. There were gates on it in the event of flooding.

Confluence of North and South Branch of the Raritan

The road went up hill on the other side. I had walked this section a couple of times before. This road was somewhat busy, but the road walk wasn’t long. We turned right from here onto North Branch River Road.

Confluence Reservoir State Park

There is a woods road going off into state park property to the right that would probably be walkable, but we didn’t have time to follow this. It was already getting too late and the sun was going down. We had to make our way through North Branch Park soon.
I knew we’d be alright, because I had just done this or at least a variation of it as a night hike, but I still wanted to get through group through the tougher parts with as much light as possible. We continued on the road and eventually came out along Rt 202. Here, we crossed over and turned right.
I wasn’t really anticipating a stop, but we ended up stopping in McDonalds.I was actually feeling a bit hungry, and there was this two for two deal going on.

North Branch of the Raritan

We went in, and of course half the group had to use the restroom it seemed. I got the two for two McDouble and McChicken, and at first felt okay.
Then, after a short while, I felt really sick. Like I had a rock in my stomach. I hadn’t eaten much at all all week, and having that McDonalds was probably the worst thing I could have done. I felt miserable until just after we ended.
We left McDonalds and followed Rt 202 across the North Branch of the Raritan, then turned left onto a woods road that leads into the grassy mowed section of North Branch Park.

North Branch Park

We cut past the playground and then toward the main park administrative offices. We crossed a little pedestrian covered bridge over a water course, then turned to the left.
Looking at the administration building, it was plain to see that the central section of it was quite an historic structure, but research into it led to nothing at all. I’ll have to call the park to find out any further details on this. We turned to the left and then cut across the fields rather directly as the sun was going down, toward a building on the far side of the lawn. There was another minor watercourse going across the fields, but it was dry enough to just walk over.

Historic main center to the North Branch Park administration building

We soon reached the woods, and I waited for the group to get caught up before heading in. The first part was a woods road. It was easy to just pass through and come out at a power line clearing soon after. I waited till the group was at least within sight, then continued on a deer path parallel with the river, across the power line and into the woods. It wasn’t the easiest thing ever to follow, but I had done it before in the dark, so it wouldn’t be so bad. We continued on through and soon the old stone viaduct that carried the Central Railroad of New Jersey over the North Branch of the Raritan came into view. It was too dark to get any good photos by this time. We headed to the bridge, and I sat down, holding my stomach from the pain while we waited for the last of the group to catch up.
Once we were all together, we headed up to cross the railroad bridge over the river. It was now too dark to continue with exploring, and I had planned to be at the bar and grill for Cindy’s birthday thing, so we just continued ahead toward the end.
On the other side, we reached North Branch Station, then headed down hill to Station Road. We crossed Chambers Brook on the road bridge and just continued north to Rt 22. I had wanted to explore the public lands along the river, but we ended up doing a bit more than I’d anticipated, and it was just too dark. I also considered taking the really weird route we’d taken on the night hike in the area, through the industrial complex, across the driving range, then through a field and to the retention pond of a hotel across from Shop Rite, but I really didn’t want to fuss with all that craziness. I was feeling crummy and just wanted to be done. I started feeling much better pretty soon though.
We turned left along 22 only for a short bit, and ended up at the Shop Rite where the cars were parked. I said some goodbyes to people but didn’t give out the usual many hugs with worries that I might get someone sick.

At the bar

I headed over to the bar to meet up with Jillane at Cinder’s dinner party, sat down and relaxed a bit. My friend Ryan Dunphy was there and we chatted a bit too. Lerch showed up soon after, followed by Stephen.
Stephen, whilst riding back to his car in the trunk of Sue’s car, lost his car keys. No one had Sue’s phone number, and so he was stuck without a ride, so Lerch helped him out. He ended up hanging out with us at the restaurant until his dad came to pick him up, and then managed to get back to Sue via Meetup and got his keys back.
The bar was closing up early that night or an internal party, and people were starting to leave for the night. Lerch and I had been talking about going to Mark Moran’s event with his band Poor Man’s Opera at the Great Notch Inn that night.

At the bar

Lerch and I traded off.
“Do you like classic rock” he asked.
“YES” she said with enthusiasm.
Do you like “Weird New Jersey” I asked.
“YES” she replied with equal enthusiasm. We then told her that Mark, one of the owners of WNJ is a friend and that he has a band that was playing that night. She was excited to go, so we made the spur of the moment plans to go and hang out up there for a bit to hear some good music.
Lerch drove us all up, and we walked into the bar between songs. Mark saw us right away and made funny comments at Lerch and I, about hiking such and such miles in a suit, etc.

Mark entertains with Poor Man's Opera

We hung out and listened to nice renditions of all sorts of songs from old Scottish arrangements with Mandolin accompaniment to the classic rock from the sixties to the eighties. I particularly liked their rendition of a Billy Idol piece, with Mark handling the vocals particularly well, singing “They don’t write like that any more”. They also did a really interesting rendition of Bill Withers’ “Use Me”.

Mark and Poor Man's Opera

I felt really relaxed as we sat there listening to music. I got a chance to chat with Mark a bit about an upcoming article he’d like to do about the perimeter series I did, and I promised to send him photos (I did).
Lerch and I agreed over the next couple days that this was just an outstanding first weekend of the year. Getting over being sick, meeting some new people, exploring some new places, and just having an overall enjoyable time. It’s hard to picture what will come next with the new year, but at this point it’s all looking very very good.

Nothing on my schedule ahead feels at all obligatory or forced at this time. Everything moving ahead looks to be exciting and inspiring.