Move to Kingston, NJ

On October 11, 2014 I moved from Fort Lee to Kingston, NJ.  I had great expectations that my job at Learning Ally would be great but, alackaday, it is a total bust.  However, there are quite a few very positive aspects of my move.

First, I got a really spacious apartment with lots of light.  My unit is pictured below.  I'm 2nd floor right in the middle of the picture.  My living room looks east and so I can watch the dawn come up and fill my space with sunlight.  Off my kitchen, on the west side, I have a large balcony that gets all the afternoon sun that also pours into my kitchen.  I dug up a number of New Guinea impatiens from the garden at the house and put them in pots as well as geraniums and some annuals.  A few didn't make the cut but most did and my kitchen is full of summer blooms in the dead of winter.

My complex has a really nice, large pool that I look forward to using this summer.  Most of the residents are slightly "older" so it is quiet and peaceful.  In fact, Kingston has a curfew law that states you must turn off your loud music or end your party by 10pm. The curfew lasts from 10pm till 8am.

Moving Day is always chaotic but mine went very smoothly.  I used a company that moved the Super Bowl Host Company, Main Street Movers, and they were great.  Of course I was super organized so the move went very smoothly and quickly.  And tho' I watched the truck be loaded and unloaded and nothing went awry, I ended up missing a selection of odd items.  For example, the glass plate that goes inside my microwave... gone.  I had a backup backup Seagate drive... missing.  And lots of small things that I am unable to account for.  Everything was packed in sealed, taped boxes.  They were unmarked so nothing stood out like a box labeled "computer" so if there were any mid-move pilfering no one would know which box to take.  And the Seagate drive and microwave plate were not packed together.  And the other small missing items were also packed apart from the kitchen and computer stuff.  So, I am utterly perplexed.  It's such a random selection of my stuff to go missing.  But as you can see from the photo below, taken on moving day, I still have plenty of other stuff left!

Kingston is a tiny little place with under 4,000 residents.  It's about 5 miles north of Princeton on Rt. 27.  And very historic.  It was founded in the 1600's.  There is an historic location nearby called Rockingham which was one of Washington's headquarters during the Revolutionary War.  And the architecture and houses are old and impressive.  Pictured below is the old windmill right in the heart of Kingston.  It was not used for processing grain but was used as a pump to draw up water for the original settlement.  There are a few businesses in Kingston including a number of dentists and other medical professionals as well as a bakery, pizza place and one restaurant and one sports bar.

One of the best features of Kingston is its proximity to the D&R Canal system (Delaware & Raritan) which is now all hiking trails.  The old towpaths have been pretty well maintained and travel for hundreds of miles.  The nearest point to my apartment is about a mile.  The trails are well-used by bikers, joggers, hikers and wanderers.  In the winter, you can see the tracks of cross-country skiers (something I have yet to try).

And wildlife.  As close as we are to civilization, there is a bounty of animal and plant life.  Of course, the deer are in abundance.  In fact my apartment complex has its own permanent herd.  On the trails I have seen deer, geese, ducks, cormorants, other aquatic birds I've not been able to identify, a beautiful red fox and countless types of birds.  There are groves of Osage orange trees, which I have never seen outside of Ohio.  In the autumn I collected a big bag of the exotic fruit and tossed them into the woods around my house in The Hollow.  Maybe in future years, people will marvel at this strange fruit in PA.

I look forward to the warmer weather as I will be able to bike my way to work traveling almost exclusively on the Canal trails.  I should be able to do the trip in under an hour, tho' I have yet to test it. And below is a photo of one of the old buildings on the Millstone River which parallels the Canal for quite a ways.  The Millstone is where the Princeton sculling team works out and that is fun to watch.