[Entry for Bill Menke’s Journal, March 29, 2008]. Lee Reiser and I kayaked the Millstone River from Kingston NJ to Manville NJ, a distance that would have been 10.9 miles had the river been straight, but was somewhat longer due to its meandering. After stashing a car at the take-out point in Manville, we drove to Kingston. We put in at about 1PM at a small park off of Route 27 in Kingston, between the Old Stone Arch Bridge and the newer Highway 27 Bridge. Spring has been late this year, and while the day is sunny, it is still rather cold, in the low fifties, Fahrenheit, I suppose. Some of the trees are budding, and we pass a few patches of yellow flowers as we carry the boats down to the launch, but otherwise the landscape still has the bareness of winter. The Millstone is running, but not especially swiftly. Its water is cold, feeling like the mid-forties to me. Both Lee and I are wearing our drysuits. We are both using rugged plastic kayaks. I’m in Hraun, my old 15-foot Wilderness Systems Sealution 2xs. This is my first time out this year, and Lee’s second.

Waypoint for Kingston put-in: MILL1 40:22.457N 74:37.131W WGS84

We sight a few turtles, sunning themselves along the bank as we paddle downstream. This section of the river is rather shallow, with many spots just a couple of feet deep. It’s fine, but any less water would be a problem. The river is surprisingly clean and wild, considering that it’s in a suburban part of New Jersey. We encounter very little trash and a rather wide variety of wildlife. We sight many types of birds, including Canada geese, crow, great blue heron, kingfisher, mallard ducks and another duck species I don’t recognize, osprey, red-tailed hawk, red-winged blackbird, sparrow, starling and turkey vulture, and hear woodpeckers, too. We sight mammals, including groundhog, grey squirrel and white tail deer, and reptiles, including turtles and a snake. The snake was being devoured by the red-tailed hawk, so maybe it shouldn’t count. The heron and the Canada geese seemed not to understand our trip plans. They kept flying ahead of us by a hundred yards or so, only to be spooked by our approach and repeat their error. We met no other kayakers. As far as we could tell, we were the only people on the river. The vegetation along the river was mostly deciduous trees that had not yet leafed out. We were surprised, however, to encounter several stands of bamboo.

We encountered several kinds of obstructions along the river, and especially snags composed of uprooted trees tangled by floodwaters. Most of these blocked only a portion of the river, and could be avoided by careful choice of route, but two posed problems. One snag blocked half the river, with the other half being obstructed by a natural jetty of sandstone, leaving only one small chute of whitewater. We successfully ran that one. Another, created by a massive fallen tree, dammed the river completely. We had to portage around it, a process that was both arduous and somewhat dangerous, owing the slipperiness of the river bank. We also encountered a second chute, also partially due to a snag. Lee successfully ran the chute, but capsized when he struck a submerged log in the pool below. He wet exited and then he and I spent a quarter hour on a sand bar bailing out his boat. The sandbar was interesting though, for it was covered by shells of a small bivalve – some sort of fresh water clam, I guess. The last obstruction was a low-head dam just downstream of the Route 514 Bridge at the town of Millstone. We portaged around it, not wanting to take any chances.

The trip seemed to be taking rather longer than we had expected. Shadows were lengthening and the air was becoming noticeably colder. I had been paddling bare-handed, but now I donned my neoprene gloves. We began to worry a bit that we would reach the take-out point by sunset. However, one virtue of the lateness of the afternoon was the low sun angle. It lit up the vegetation along the river bank beautifully, which led to their reflection in the still water of the river being especially bright and beautiful. We paddled pretty steadily towards the end, counting down the remaining miles … 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … Finally, at 7PM, just at sunset, we sighted the Route 533 Bridge in Manville. We paddled a short way up a tributary of the Millstone, located at river left just upstream of the bridge, and pulled up at a launch nearby where we had parked one of our cars.

Waypoint for parking area on Weston Canal Rd, MILL2 40:31.760N 74:34.895W WGS84

Waypoint for kayak launch, off Rt. 623 in Manville, MILL3 40:31.807N 74:35.375W WGS84

The walk from the launch to the parking lot was about a half mile. I worked out the stiffness of six hours of kayaking by jogging it. Once I had retrieved the car, we loaded the boats onto it and headed back to Kingston to fetch the other car. About 6 hours.