Wednesday, April 1, 2015

April at Last

Believe it or not this (photo at left) was the least snowy of the two boat launches near the Route 119 bridge over the Nashua River in Groton/Pepperell.  I'd first checked the Petapawag launch in Groton, but found the access road had snow too deep for my car to handle.

So I launched on the Pepperell side of the bridge.  Getting my boat to the water was made all the easier by just sliding it on the snow...
 
April is in front of my boat's bow and March is to its stern (I hope).  I was very happy to turn the page on my calendar this morning as the past three months were way too long, cold, and snowy for my taste.

Because April arrived in a fairly breezy fashion I paddled upriver on the Nashua letting the tree-lined banks blunt the wind...


Where Robinson Brook enters the river...

 I stopped to admire this well engineered beaver deceiver...
...located on the other side of an old railroad grade which once led to Pepperell and Brookline, NH...
One hundred years ago freight trains came down this grade carrying ice cut from Brookline's Potanipo Lake bound for Boston.  The line ran 14 miles to Squannacook Junction where it connected with the Peterborough and Shirley Branch in order to reach Ayer and points to the east.  The ice trains stopped in the 1930's, though some freight service to Pepperell continued until 1942.

In a letter to the Groton Herald, Paul Funch explained the history of this long gone railroad and its proximity to the historic Fitch's Bridge site...
 
My upriver journey ended a little above the Route 225 bridge and, after turning about, the current brought me downriver swiftly and before I knew it Route 119 loomed ahead...

I got off the river just before it started to get crowded...(seriously) with multi-crewed shells and coach containing power boats from the Groton School boathouse.  Amazing to see how fast those shells cut through the water. 

Trash found on the upstream side of snags along the way...

Oh yeah, fittingly with this being April Fool's Day, one of my brand-new Mukluk boots leaked on its maiden voyage.

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