Watch City Paddlin'

Managed to get out on the Charles River's Lakes District under yesterday's bright blue skies.  Launched from a good facility at Woerd Avenue in Waltham located across from Mt. Feake cemetery, and headed downriver past the old Waltham Watch Co. factory where, according to Wikipedia, some 35 million watches were made before the company closed in 1957.  Waltham has been known as the "Watch City" ever since.  Just before the Prospect Street bridge are the piers that once supported Nuttings on the Charles, a wooden dance hall built above the river where my parents danced back in the 30s and 40s.  I remember when every kid in my neighborhood ran there upon hearing it was on fire.  We got there just in time to see the fully engulfed structure collapse into the water.

Between Prospect St. and the Moody Street bridge quite a bit of trash was encountered along the river's west shore.  The dam responsible for creating the Lakes District lies just beyond the Moody Street bridge...

 
Here I turned about and I paddled upriver the length of the Lakes District to where the Norumbega Amusement Park and its scary ride, Davey Jones' Locker, operated back when I was a kid.

Along the way I paddled past one area where the landowner provides the following interesting sights:

This timely reminder that it's the season of the rut...

How small pets can escape to the river...

How large pets can also escape...

This guy who'd have been more of  a surprise if a real one hadn't recently been found dead on nearby Rt. 95...

All of the above face the river from the hillside of a peninsula that juts out into the river.  The tip of the peninsula, however, is reserved for the crème de la crème ...

Fortunately, for the wearer, the eagle's talons are relaxed...

Further upriver I paddled into a cove from where I could just barely see the Norumbega Tower...

...built in 1889 by Eben N. Horsford who was convinced the Vikings had a pre-Columbus settlement at the confluence of Stony Brook and the river.  These days most historians disagree.

The cove at Norumbega where many a canoe, kayak, or standup paddleboard has been rented...

Still a little foliage to be seen...

The trash (collected early in the paddle) that got to accompany me on yesterday's tour of the Lakes District...