Another Little River Town

 Raritan River at Clinton, NJ

6 May 2012

By the time I woke up this morning, all the group rides I might have been interested in were several miles into their routes.

So Jack and I drove up to Clinton instead.  Much of the thrill of being there, I discovered, is in getting there by bike.  Still, we managed a few hours in the small town.

Today was their annual "Pansy Festival."  I knew it meant the first thing you all probably thought of, but I'd hoped it meant the second, which would have been much more fun.  

Not many people turned up, it seemed.  There were more petunias and morning glories than pansies anyway.

The big find for me, thanks to Jack's sleuthing beforehand, was Extraordinary Beads.  There wasn't much in the shop that I'd go back for, and I was just about to leave when I caught sight of a small pile of Venitian beads.  These days, hollow glass beads in the Venitian style are made badly and cheaply in China.  The real thing is getting harder to find.  I was suspicious until I saw the price, but I still had to ask.  Put it this way:  If I make a bracelet or a necklace using all of them at once, it will be so expensive that nobody will buy it.  I'm looking at many pairs of earrings. That'll be better. Dangling beads will catch the light.

I took pictures of the river while we ate lunch outdoors.

Two fishermen waded past us, towards the spillway.  In the short time we spent by the river, I don't think they caught anything. 

On our way back to the car, a pot of pansies peered out at me from behind a doorway.

We took the back roads towards Stockton.  I tried to guess where the watershed changed from Raritan to Delaware.  It was pretty easy to do.  First we went up, up, up, then down, down, down.  On our way we passed through Pittstown and Quakertown, which Jack missed because he was blinking both times.  He did see Sergeantsville because he had to remind me that only two bikers outside of the Sergeantsville Deli might not be an unusually low number after 3 p.m. on a Sunday.

We went into the Stockton farmer's market.  Jack got some wine next door.

Then we drove to Lambertville, where I finally went inside the Homestead farmer's market.  It's half general store, half garden store.  I didn't see any pansies.

We had time enough to swing by the bookstores in Lambertville before they closed, too.

Now that I've seen a few more back roads between Clinton and Stockton, I've got a route or two brewing.  Think hard rollers from river to river.  Heh.  Uphill both ways.