State Parks Adventure

This week my intrepid state parks adventure pals, Barb and Blizzard, and I set out for the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park. It was another of this spring's generous gifts of a breezy and sunny day.
Thanks to our sometimes confusing but usually useful gps devices, we've had far less trouble finding these parks than with just our paper maps. This one had the unexpected wrench in the works of a major detour on exactly the road we were supposed to take to find the park building where we ould get the stamps for our Passports to Adventures Program booklets. Again, we marveled how people can work or live right down the street from something and be etnrely unaware of its existence. For example, the people we met at the Princeton Center for Arts and Education had no idea where the D & R Canal State Parks building was and vice versa, when we called the D & R folks, they had no idea where the Princeton Center was, but we finally found an alternate route to the building and hiked a mile or two on the charming canal path, then headed over to a really excellent deli to buy picnic lunches. They had lots of vegetarian and vegan selections and everything was FRESH - it was the best fruit salad I think I've ever bought. I rarely buy fruit salad out because it always has a stale and slimy quality. We returned to the Canal for a picnic at a nice shady canalside table provided for that purpose.

WATER TRAVEL: Lately my mind ha been taken up with transport in the state. Since I'm taking volunteer training at Bivalve, I've once again been introduced to both boat and river travel and railroads of the past. So it looks like it was wind and water into canals and mules, steam boats, followed by coal fired railroads and electric trolleys, followed by trucks.

I missed an interesting talk at the Mauricetown Historical Society on steamships on the rivers, given by a fellow volunteer from Bivalve. I was just overexted that week and couldn't push myself to one more activity, no matter how tempting.

Speaking of tempting activities: the Sunday Lecture on Civil War Women at Burlington County Historical Society, Corson Poley Center was Outstanding. the presenter was enthusiastic, very knowledgeable and gave a lively and fascinating lecture with power point slides. The whole Sunday Lecture series has been wonderful and i'm glad I knew about it and went to it. I think there is one Sunday lecure left.

I missed the Burlington County Roundtable this month, however, because it conflicted with a course I'm taking in the Westward Expansion at Camden County Coollege, Rohrer Building, Cherry Hill. The Roundtable was at Paulsdale, too, a double disappointment to have missed that visit to a favorite site as well as the always edifying Roundtable. Hopefully the plannets will be aligned for me to make the next one.

Happy Trails!