Sunday River Stroll

Have not visited the KLG (Ken Lockwoood Gorge) since about this time last year, though it seems much more recent. Today's outing was real simple. Patricia reads a magazine of that name. I first got 11 needed hours of sleep after going to bed at 9:30, fixed coffee to accompany a bagel with whitefish spread over butter, and got my camera bag just before we walked out, soon connecting with CR 512 from U.S. 206, and some 10 or 15 minutes later stopped at the bookstore in Califon, closed on Sundays. Now we know. Trish found it on her mobile device as we drove off, so she knows when we might return.

Having come in on Hoffman's Crossing Road, I drove past the spot where we parked last time, in April 2016, and where I parked again in November when I fly fished with my son. "Are you supposed to drive here!?" Instead of turning my head Trish's way, I continued to look straight ahead as I prepared to take it slow over a patch of ice covering the entire one-lane width. To my left, a steeply rising bank. To my right, pretty much immediately to my right, the bank steeply descended to South Branch Raritan River. "Yes," I said. The last thing I wanted to do was begin to slide down the slippery slope of explanation.

This is the first I've seen the old train crossing. There's parking here. A chain across the roadway immediately beyond.

We walked a half mile or so one way. I shot 67 photos, but best of all, I accompanied my wife on a walk that was, as I mentioned, a really simple outing, but rather than thin-feeling, substantive. Sadie got in the water a couple of times, air temperature about 34. I watched a couple of guys fly fish. Certainly, the river must harbor plenty of trout. I saw magic happen in a slow stretch during October a couple of years ago. More spring-stockers than large fall fish. Rising for tiny midges. Until the darkening of Magic Hour, there seemed no fish in that stretch, except a couple of obvious, large trout.

On the way home, I pointed out that this was CR 512 we traveled, the same route that leads from Far Hills into Peapack-Gladstone. Once again, as I had during another fairly recent outing, I asked Trish if she had any wherewithal about our location in relation to home and other places. Very little, but this time, her interest piqued. "I want to know this is 512." I wondered if she would actually ride out to Califon Bookstore, though something in me refused to press the issue, as if too delicate to do anything about but let grow on its own, as at least this unexpected turn of concern is something of a positive result from that last query about whereabouts I mentioned. Trish knows the local roads. And when we lived in North Plainfield, she figured out how to drive to U.S. 202 in Morristown to her workplace by convenient back roads; she can certainly make her way to that bookstore, if she wants.


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