Canal House Tour

It has been a while since we've had more activities on a day than we can really handle, but last Sunday was that kind of day.

Don was supposed to be in charge of live streaming the church service, but that meant creating "the deck" on Friday night or Saturday to be ready for when church stared. Between working at REI, volunteering at the annual Full Moon bike ride, and sleep, he ran out of time to do the necessary prep work. Someone else took over, freeing us from going to church (we can watch later online).

We had tickets to see "Beautiful Things" at Langhorne Players, tickets that included a talk back. The church was going to have a production of "Life of an Actress" at the same time. Then we learned the Canal House in Lawrenceville would be part of a Canal House Challenge.

Ideally we would ride our bike to visit the five houses on the Canal House Challenge. We figured the distance was about 17 miles one way -- easy for Don, not so easy for me even on the tandem. Instead we drove. Later we learned friends did the ride and said it took the same amount of time as their friends who drove the route (I suspect their friends drove them back since they only talked about their one-way route).

The draw to the canal house in Lawrenceville is that it has been closed since 2011 when Hurricane Irene flooded it.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canal House organization, the bridgetender and locktender homes in East Millstone, Blackwells Mills, Griggstown, Kingston, and Port Mercer (Lawrenceville) coordinated their hours and their volunteers to be open from 10-4 on September 15. At the first location, they gave you a brochure with pictures of the five places, and locations (not quite addresses) to guide you to each one. Driving directions (or addresses or GPS coordinates) would have been helpful. Riding the tandem would have been the simplest.

My goal was to go inside Port Mercer. After that, I suggested we go from North to South because the northernmost one were open the most infrequently.

Surprisingly we only bumped into one person we knew -- a biking friend of Don's he has been meaning to contact to thank for his work in getting the D&R Canal towpath usable. He regularly commutes on it.

Port Mercer: looks fantastic! I heard the Junior Historians did much of the grunt work, including discovering the brick patio beneath a covering of weeds. The inside looked like someone could move into it, except that the bathroom is out back. I did smack my head on the way upstairs from the back addition. Ouch!

Port Mercer

East Millstone: they have a separate locktender space perhaps 9x9. The homes were pretty tiny, especially considering they had families. No space for privacy. We noticed one of the outhouses was a double-seater hugging a corner.

Blackwells Mill: this one was on the corner of two busy streets with the locktender's station across one of the streets.

Griggstown: this one was lived in until the early 1970s. It only sat vacant a couple of years before the D&R Canal Watch was created in 1974. It is also the most modernized of the homes with running water. The granddaughter of the last resident told us stories about visiting the place when she was little. 

Kingston: due to our jumping from the last to the first, we ended in an odd spot. As it was a beautiful day, parking was the toughest at this spot.

Our prize for finishing the challenge: a magnet.

I hope this becomes an annual tradition. If so, next time we hope the weather is just as nice and that we ride it.